Компенсаторные средства английского языка при переводе русских глаголов многократного действия

' exclaimed Margarita. 'No, I beg you, Messire, there’s no need for

that!'

`As you wish, as you wish,' Woland replied, and Azazello sat down in

his place.

'So, where were we, precious Queen Margot?' said Koroviev. 'Ah, yes,

the heart… He does hit the heart,' Koroviev pointed his long finger in

Azazello’s direction, 'as you choose — any auricle of the heart, or any

ventricle.'

Margarita did not understand at first, and when she did, she exclaimed

in surprise:

'But they’re covered up!'

'My dear,' clattered Koroviev, 'that's the point, that they’re covered

up! That’s the whole salt of it! Anyone can hit an uncovered object!'

Koroviev took a seven of spades from the desk drawer, offered it to

Margarita, and asked her to mark one of the pips with her fingernail.

Margarita marked the one in the upper right-hand corner. Hella hid the

card under a pillow, crying:

'Ready!'

Azazello, who was sitting with his back to the pillow, drew a black

automatic from the pocket of his tailcoat trousers, put the muzzle over his

shoulder, and, without turning towards the bed, fired, provoking a merry

fright in Margarita. The seven was taken from under the bullet-pierced

pillow. The pip marked by Margarita had a hole in it.

'I wouldn’t want to meet you when you’re carrying a gun,' Margarita

said, casting coquettish glances at Azazello. She had a passion for anyone

who did something top-notch.

'Precious Queen,' squeaked Koroviev, `I wouldn’t advise anyone to meet

him, even if he’s not carrying a gun! I give you my word of honour as an

ex-choirmaster and precentor that no one would congratulate the one doing

the meeting.'

The cat sat scowling throughout the shooting trial, and suddenly

announced:

'I undertake to beat the record with the seven.'

Azazello growled out something in reply to that. But the cat was

stubborn, and demanded not one but two guns. Azazello took a second gun from

the second back pocket of his trousers and, twisting his mouth disdainfully,

handed it to the braggart together with the first. Two pips were marked on

the seven. The cat made lengthy preparations, turning his back to the

pillow. Margarita sat with her fingers in her ears and looked at the owl

dozing on the mantelpiece. The cat fired both guns, after which Hella

shrieked at once, the owl fell dead from the mantelpiece, and the smashed

clock stopped. Hella, whose hand was all bloody, clutched at the cat’s fur

with a howl, and he clutched her hair in retaliation, and the two got

tangled into a ball and rolled on the floor. One of the goblets fell from

the table and broke.

'Pull this rabid hellion off me!' wailed the cat, fighting off Hella,

who was sitting astride him. The combatants were separated, and Koroviev

blew on Hella’s bullet-pierced finger and it mended.

'I can’t shoot when someone’s talking at my elbow!' shouted Behemoth,

trying to stick in place a huge clump of fur pulled from his back.

'I'll bet,' said Woland, smiling to Margarita, `that he did this stunt

on purpose. He’s not a bad shot.'

Hella and the cat made peace and, as a sign of their reconciliation,

exchanged kisses. The card was taken from under the pillow and checked. Not

a single pip had been hit, except for the one shot through by Azazello.

" That can’t be,' insisted the cat, holding the card up to the light of

the candelabra.

The merry supper went on. The candles guttered in the candelabra, the

dry, fragrant warmth of the fireplace spread waves over the room.

After eating, Margarita was enveloped in a feeling of bliss. She

watched the blue-grey smoke-rings from Azazello’s cigar float into the

fireplace, while the cat caught them on the tip of a sword. She did not want

to go anywhere, though according to her reckoning it was already late. By

all tokens, it was getting on towards six in the morning. Taking advantage

of a pause, Margarita turned to Woland and said timidly:

'I suppose it’s time for me … it’s late …'

'What's your hurry?' asked Woland, politely but a bit drily. The rest

kept silent, pretending to be occupied with the smoke-rings.

'Yes, it’s time,' Margarita repeated, quite embarrassed by it, and

looked around as if searching for some cape or cloak. She was suddenly

embarrassed by her nakedness. She got up from the table. Woland silently

took his worn-out and greasy dressing-gown from the bed, and Koroviev threw

it over Margarita’s shoulders.

'I thank you, Messire,' Margarita said barely audibly, and looked

questioningly at Woland. In reply, he smiled at her courteously and

indifferently. Black anguish somehow surged up all at once in Margarita’s

heart. She felt herself deceived. No rewards would be offered her for all

her services at the ball, apparently, just as no one was detaining her. And

yet it was perfectly clear to her that she had nowhere to go. The fleeting

thought of having to return to her house provoked an inward burst of despair

in her. Should she ask, as Azazello had temptingly advised in the

Alexandrovsky Garden? 'No, not for anything!' she said to herself.

'Goodbye, Messire,' she said aloud, and thought, 'I must just get out

of here, and then I’ll go to the river and drown myself.'

'Sit down now,' Woland suddenly said imperiously.

Margarita changed countenance and sat down.

'Perhaps you want to say something before you leave?'

'No, nothing, Messire,' Margarita answered proudly, 'except that if you

still need me, I’m willing and ready to do anything you wish. I’m not tired

in the least, and I had a very good time at the ball. So that if it were

still going on, I would again offer my knee for thousands of gallowsbirds

and murderers to kiss.' Margarita looked at Woland as if through a veil, her

eyes filling with tears.

'True! You’re perfectly right!' Woland cried resoundingly and terribly.

That’s the way!'

'That's the way!' Woland’s retinue repeated like an echo.

`We've been testing you,' said Woland. 'Never ask for anything! Never

for anything, and especially from those who are stronger than you. They’ll

make the offer themselves, and give everything themselves. Sit down, proud

woman,' Woland tore the heavy dressing-gown from Margarita and again she

found herself sitting next to him on the bed. 'And so, Margot,' Woland went

on, softening his voice, `what do you want for having been my hostess

tonight? What do you wish for having spent the ball naked? What price do you

put on your knee? What are your losses from my guests, whom you just called

gallowsbirds? Speak! And speak now without constraint, for it is I who

offer.'

Margarita’s heart began to pound, she sighed heavily, started pondering

something.

'Well, come, be braver!' Woland encouraged her. 'Rouse your fantasy,

spur it on! Merely being present at the scene of the murder of that

inveterate blackguard of a baron is worth a reward, particularly if the

person is a woman. Well, then?'

Margarita’s breath was taken away, and she was about to utter the

cherished words prepared in her soul, when she suddenly turned pale, opened

her mouth and stared: 'Frieda! … Frieda, Frieda!' someone’s importunate,

imploring voice cried in her ears, `my name is Frieda!' And Margarita,

stumbling over the words, began to speak:

'So, that means … I can ask … for one thing?'

'Demand, demand, my donna,' Woland replied, smiling knowingly, 'you may

demand one thing.'

Ah, how adroitly and distinctly Woland, repeating Margarita’s words,

underscored that 'one thing'!

Margarita sighed again and said:

'I want them to stop giving Frieda that handkerchief with which she

smothered her baby.'

The cat raised his eyes to heaven and sighed noisily, but said nothing,

perhaps remembering how his ear had already suffered.

'In view of the fact,' said Woland, grinning, 'that the possibility of

your having been bribed by that fool Frieda is, of course, entirely excluded

— being incompatible with your royal dignity — I simply don’t know what to

do. One thing remains, perhaps: to procure some rags and stuff them in all

the cracks of my bedroom.'

`What are you talking about, Messire?' Margarita was amazed, hearing

these indeed incomprehensible words.

`I agree with you completely, Messire,' the cat mixed into the

conversation, 'precisely with rags!' And the cat vexedly struck the table

with his paw.

'I am talking about mercy,' Woland explained his words, not taking his

fiery eye off Margarita. 'It sometimes creeps, quite unexpectedly and

perfidiously, through the narrowest cracks. And so I am talking about rags

…'

'And I’m talking about the same thing!' the cat exclaimed, and drew

back from Margarita just in case, raising his paws to protect his sharp

ears, covered with a pink cream.

'Get out,' said Woland.

'I haven’t had coffee yet,' replied the cat, how can I leave? Can it

be, Messire, that on a festive night the guests are divided into two sorts?

One of the first, and the other, as that sad skinflint of a barman put it,

of second freshness?'

'Quiet,' ordered Woland, and, turning to Margarita, he asked: 'You are,

by all tokens, a person of exceptional kindness? A highly moral person?'

'No,' Margarita replied emphatically, 'I know that one can only speak

frankly with you, and so I will tell you frankly: I am a light-minded

person. I asked you for Frieda only because I was careless enough to give

her firm hope. She’s waiting, Messire, she believes in my power. And if

she’s left disappointed, I’ll be in a terrible position. I’ll have no peace

in my life. There’s no help for it, it just happened.'

'Ah,' said Woland, 'that's understandable.'

'Will you do it?' Margarita asked quietly.

`By no means,' answered Woland. 'The thing is, dear Queen, that a

little confusion has taken place here. Each department must look after its

own affairs. I don’t deny our possibilities are rather great, they’re much

greater than some not very keen people may think…'

'Yes, a whole lot greater,' the cat, obviously proud of these

possibilities, put in, unable to restrain himself.

'Quiet, devil take you!' Woland said to him, and went on addressing

Margarita: 'But there is simply no sense in doing what ought to be done by

another — as I just put it — department. And so, I will not do it, but you

will do it yourself.'

'And will it be done at my word?'

Azazello gave Margarita an ironic look out of the comer of his blind

eye, shook his red head imperceptibly, and snorted.

`Just do it, what a pain!' Woland muttered and, turning the globe,

began peering into some detail on it, evidently also occupied with something

else during his conversation with Margarita.

'So, Frieda …' prompted Koroviev.

'Frieda!' Margarita cried piercingly.

The door flew open and a dishevelled, naked woman, now showing no signs

of drunkenness, ran into the room with frenzied eyes and stretched her arms

out to Margarita, who said majestically:

'You are forgiven. The handkerchief will no longer be brought to you.'

Frieda’s scream rang out, she fell face down on the floor and

prostrated in a cross before Margarita. Woland waved his hand and Frieda

vanished from sight.

'Thank you, and farewell,' Margarita said, getting up.

'Well, Behemoth,' began Woland, 'let's not take advantage of the action

of an impractical person on a festive night.' He turned to Margarita: 'And

so, that does not count, I did nothing. What do you want for yourself?'

Silence ensued, interrupted by Koroviev, who started whispering in

Margarita’s ear:

'Diamond donna, this time I advise you to be more reasonable! Or else

fortune may slip away.'

'I want my beloved master to be returned to me right now, this second,'

said Margarita, and her face was contorted by a spasm.

Here a wind burst into the room, so that the flames of the candles in

the candelabra were flattened, the heavy curtain on the window moved aside,

the window opened wide and revealed far away on high a full, not morning but

midnight moon. A greenish kerchief of night-light fell from the window-sill

to the floor, and in it appeared Ivanushka’s night visitor, who called

himself a master. He was in his hospital clothes — robe, slippers and the

black cap, with which he never parted. His unshaven face twitched in a

grimace, he glanced sidelong with a crazy amorousness at the lights of the

candles, and the torrent of moonlight seethed around him.

Margarita recognized him at once, gave a moan, clasped her hands, and

ran to him. She kissed him on the forehead, on the lips, pressed herself to

his stubbly cheek, and her long held-back tears now streamed down her face.

She uttered only one word, repeating it senselessly:

'You … you … you…'

The master held her away from him and said in a hollow voice:

'Don't weep, Margot, don’t torment me, I’m gravely ill.' He grasped the

window-sill with his hand, as if he were about to jump on to it and flee,

and, peering at those sitting there, cried: `I'm afraid, Margot! My

hallucinations are beginning again…'

Sobs stifled Margarita, she whispered, choking on the words:

'No, no, no … don’t be afraid of anything … I’m with you … I’m

with you …'

Koroviev deftly and inconspicuously pushed a chair towards the master,

and he sank into it, while Margarita threw herself on her knees, pressed

herself to the sick man’s side, and so grew quiet. In her agitation she had

not noticed that her nakedness was somehow suddenly over, that she was now

wearing a black silk cloak. The sick man hung his head and began looking

down with gloomy, sick eyes.

`Yes,' Woland began after a silence, 'they did a good job on him.' He

ordered Koroviev: 'Knight, give this man something to drink.'

Margarita begged the master in a trembling voice:

'Drink, drink! You’re afraid? No, no, believe me, they’ll help you!'

The sick man took the glass and drank what was in it, but his hand

twitched and the lowered glass smashed at his feet.

'It's good luck, good luck!' Koroviev whispered to Margarita. 'Look,

he’s already coming to himself.'

Indeed, the sick man’s gaze was no longer so wild and troubled.

'But is it you, Margot?' asked the moonlit guest.

'Don't doubt, it’s I,' replied Margarita.

'More!' ordered Woland.

After the master emptied the second glass, his eyes became alive and

intelligent.

'Well, there, that’s something else again,' said Woland, narrowing his

eyes. 'Now let’s talk. Who are you?'

'I'm nobody now,' the master replied, and a smile twisted his mouth.

'Where have you just come from?'

'From the house of sorrows. I am mentally ill,' replied the visitor.

These words Margarita could not bear, and she began to weep again. Then

she wiped her eyes and cried out:

Terrible words! Terrible words! He’s a master, Messire, I’m letting you

know that! Cure him, he’s worth it!'

`Do you know with whom you are presently speaking?' Woland asked the

visitor. 'On whom you have come calling?'

'I do,' replied the master, 'my neighbour in the madhouse was that boy,

Ivan Homeless. He told me about you.'

'Ah, yes, yes,' Woland responded, 'I had the pleasure of meeting that

young man at the Patriarch’s Ponds. He almost drove me mad myself, proving

to me that I don’t exist. But you do believe that it is really I?'

'I must believe,' said the visitor, 'though, of course, it would be

much more comforting to consider you the product of a hallucination. Forgive

me,' the master added, catching himself.

'Well, so, if it’s more comforting, consider me that,' Woland replied

courteously. 'No, no!' Margarita said, frightened, shaking the master by the

shoulder. 'Come to your senses! It’s really he before you!'

The cat intruded here as well.

`And I really look like a hallucination. Note my profile in the

moonlight.' The cat got into the shaft of moonlight and wanted to add

something else, but on being asked to keep silent, replied: 'Very well, very

well, I’m prepared to be silent. I’ll be a silent hallucination,' and fell

silent.

'But tell me, why does Margarita call you a master?' asked Woland.

The man smiled and said:

" That is an excusable weakness. She has too high an opinion of a novel

I wrote.'

'What is this novel about?'

'It is a novel about Pontius Pilate.' Here again the tongues of the

candles swayed and leaped, the dishes on the table clattered, Woland burst

into thunderous laughter, but neither frightened nor surprised anyone.

Behemoth applauded for some reason.

'About what? About what? About whom?' said Woland, ceasing to laugh.

'And that — now? It’s stupendous! Couldn’t you have found some other

subject? Let me see it.' Woland held out his hand, palm up.

'Unfortunately, I cannot do that,' replied the master, `because I

burned it in the stove.'

'Forgive me, but I don’t believe you,' Woland replied, 'that cannot be:

manuscripts don’t burn.'[2] He turned to Behemoth and said, 'Come on.

Behemoth, let’s have the novel.'

The cat instantly jumped off the chair, and everyone saw that he had

been sitting on a thick stack of manuscripts. With a bow, the cat gave the

top copy to Woland. Margarita trembled and cried out, again shaken to the

point of tears:

'It's here, the manuscript! It’s here!' She dashed to Woland and added

in admiration:

'All-powerful! All-powerful!'

Woland took the manuscript that had been handed to him, turned it over,

laid it aside, and silently, without smiling, stared at the master. But he,

for some unknown reason, lapsed into anxiety and uneasiness, got up from the

chair, wrung his hands, and, quivering as he addressed the distant moon,

began to murmur:

`And at night, by moonlight, I have no peace… Why am I being

troubled? Oh, gods, gods …'

Margarita clutched at the hospital robe, pressing herself to him, and

began to murmur herself in anguish and tears:

'Oh, God, why doesn’t the medicine help you?'

'It's nothing, nothing, nothing,' whispered Koroviev, twisting about

the master, 'nothing, nothing… One more little glass, I’ll keep you

company…'

And the little glass winked and gleamed in the moonlight, and this

little glass helped. The master was put back in his place, and the sick

man’s face assumed a calm expression.

'Well, it’s all clear now,' said Woland, tapping the manuscript with a

long finger.

'Perfectly clear,' confirmed the cat, forgetting his promise to be a

silent hallucination. 'Now the main line of this opus is thoroughly clear to

me. What do you say, Azazello?' he turned to the silent Azazello.

`I say,' the other twanged, `that it would be a good thing to drown

you.'

'Have mercy, Azazello,' the cat replied to him, 'and don’t suggest the

idea to my sovereign. Believe me, every night I’d come to you in the same

moonlight garb as the poor master, and nod and beckon to you to follow me.

How would that be, Azazello?'

'Well, Margarita,' Woland again entered the conversation, `tell me

everything you need.'

Margarita’s eyes lit up, and she said imploringly to Woland:

'Allow me to whisper something to him.'

Woland nodded his head, and Margarita, leaning to the master’s ear,

whispered something to him. They heard him answer her.

'No, it’s too late. I want nothing more in my life, except to see you.

But again I advise you to leave me, or you’ll perish with me.'

'No, I won’t leave you,' Margarita answered and turned to Woland:

'I ask that we be returned to the basement in the lane off the Arbat,

and that the lamp be burning, and that everything be as it was.

Here the master laughed and, embracing Margarita’s long-since-uncurled

head, said:

'Ah, don’t listen to the poor woman, Messire! Someone else has long

been living in the basement, and generally it never happens that anything

goes back to what it used to be.' He put his cheek to his friend’s head,

embraced Margarita, and began muttering: 'My poor one … my poor one…'

'Never happens, you say?' said Woland. That’s true. But we shall try.'

And he called out: 'Azazello!'

At once there dropped from the ceiling on to the floor a bewildered and

nearly delirious citizen in nothing but his underwear, though with a

suitcase in his hand for some reason and wearing a cap. This man trembled

with fear and kept cowering.

'Mogarych?' Azazello asked of the one fallen from the sky.

'Aloisy Mogarych,'[3] the man answered, shivering. `Was it you who,

after reading Latunsky’s article about this man’s novel, wrote a

denunciation saying that he kept illegal literature?' asked Azazello.

The newly arrived citizen turned blue and dissolved in tears of

repentance.

'You wanted to move into his rooms?' Azazello twanged as soulfully as

he could.

The hissing of an infuriated cat was heard in the room, and Margarita,

with a howl of 'Know a witch when you see one!', sank her nails into Aloisy

Mogarych’s face.

A commotion ensued.

`What are you doing?' the master cried painfully. 'Margot, don’t

disgrace yourself!'

'I protest! It’s not a disgrace!' shouted the cat.

Koroviev pulled Margarita away.

`I put in a bathroom…' the bloodied Mogarych cried, his teeth

chattering, and, terrified, he began pouring out some balderdash, 'the

whitewashing alone … the vitriol…'

'Well, it’s nice that you put in a bathroom,' Azazello said

approvingly, 'he needs to take baths.' And he yelled: 'Out!'

Then Mogarych was turned upside down and left Woland’s bedroom through

the open window.

The master goggled his eyes, whispering:

`Now that’s maybe even neater than what Ivan described!' Thoroughly

struck, he looked around and finally said to the cat: 'But, forgive me, was

it you … was it you, sir …' he faltered, not knowing how to address a

cat, 'are you that same cat, sir, who got on the tram?'

'I am,' the flattered cat confirmed and added: 'It's pleasing to hear

you address a cat so politely. For some reason, cats are usually addressed

familiarly, though no cat has ever drunk bruderschaft with anyone.'

'It seems to me that you’re not so much a cat…' the master replied

hesitantly. 'Anyway, they’ll find me missing at the hospital,' he added

timidly to Woland.

'Well, how are they going to find you missing?' Koroviev soothed him,

and some papers and ledgers turned up in his hands. 'By your medical

records?'

Yes …'

Koroviev flung the medical records into the fireplace.

'No papers, no person,' Koroviev said with satisfaction. `And this is

your landlord’s house register?'

Y-yes…'

" Who is registered in it? Aloisy Mogarych?' Koroviev blew on the page

of the house register. 'Hup, two! He’s not there, and, I beg you to notice,

never has been. And if this landlord gets surprised, tell him he dreamed

Aloisy up! Mogarych? What Mogarych? There was never any Mogarych!' Here the

loose-leafed book evaporated from Koroviev’s hands. 'And there it is,

already back in the landlord’s desk.'

'What you say is true,' the master observed, struck by the neatness of

Koroviev’s work, 'that if there are no papers, there’s no person. I have no

papers, so there’s precisely no me.'

`I beg your pardon,' Koroviev exclaimed, `but that precisely is a

hallucination, your papers are right here.' And Koroviev handed the master

his papers. Then he rolled up his eyes and whispered sweetly to Margarita:

`And here is your property, Margarita Nikolaevna,' and Koroviev handed

Margarita the notebook with charred edges, the dried rose, the photograph,

and, with particular care, the savings book. 'Ten thousand, as you kindly

deposited, Margarita Nikolaevna. We don’t need what belongs to others.'

'Sooner let my paws wither than touch what belongs to others,' the cat

exclaimed, all puffed up, dancing on the suitcase to stamp down all the

copies of the ill-fated novel.

'And your little papers as well,' Koroviev continued, handing Margarita

her papers and then turning to report deferentially to Woland:

That’s all, Messire!'

'No, not all,' replied Woland, tearing himself away from the globe.

'What, dear donna, will you order me to do with your retinue? I

personally don’t need them.'

Here the naked Natasha ran through the open door, clasped her hands,

and cried out to Margarita:

`Be happy, Margarita Nikolaevna!' She nodded to the master and again

turned to Margarita: 'I knew all about where you used to go.'

'Domestics know everything,' observed the cat, raising a paw

significantly. 'It's a mistake to think they’re blind.'

'What do you want, Natasha?' asked Margarita. 'Go back to the house.'

`Darling Margarita Nikolaevna,' Natasha began imploringly and knelt

down, 'ask them' - she cast a sidelong glance at Woland — 'to let me stay a

witch. I don’t want any more of that house! I won’t marry an engineer or a

technician! Yesterday at the ball Monsieur Jacques proposed to me.' Natasha

opened her fist and showed some gold coins.

Margarita turned a questioning look to Woland. He nodded. Then Natasha

threw herself on Margarita’s neck, gave her a smacking kiss, and with a

victorious cry flew out the window.

In Natasha’s place Nikolai Ivanovich now stood. He had regained his

former human shape, but was extremely glum and perhaps even annoyed.

This is someone I shall dismiss with special pleasure,' said Woland,

looking at Nikolai Ivanovich with disgust, `with exceptional pleasure, so

superfluous he is here.'

'I earnestly beg that you issue me a certificate,' Nikolai Ivanovich

began with great insistence, but looking around wildly, 'as to where I spent

last night.'

'For what purpose?' the cat asked sternly.

`For the purpose of presenting it to the police and to my wife,'

Nikolai Ivanovich said firmly.

'We normally don’t issue certificates,' the cat replied, frowning,

'but, very well, for you we’ll make an exception.'

And before Nikolai Ivanovich had time to gather his wits, the naked

Hella was sitting at a typewriter and the cat was dictating to her.

'It is hereby certified that the bearer, Nikolai Ivanovich, spent the

said night at Satan’s ball, having been summoned there in the capacity of a

means of transportation … make a parenthesis, Hella, in the parenthesis

put «hog». Signed — Behemoth.'

'And the date?' squeaked Nikolai Ivanovich.

We don’t put dates, with a date the document becomes invalid,'

responded the cat, setting his scrawl to it. Then he got himself a stamp

from somewhere, breathed on it according to all the rules, stamped the word

'payed' on the paper, and handed it to Nikolai Ivanovich. After which

Nikolai Ivanovich disappeared without a trace, and in his place appeared a

new, unexpected guest.

'And who is this one?' Woland asked squeamishly, shielding himself from

the candlelight with his hand.

Varenukha hung his head, sighed, and said softly:

'Let me go back, I can’t be a vampire. I almost did Rimsky in that time

with Hella. And I’m not bloodthirsty. Let me go!'

`What is all this raving!' Woland said with a wince. «Which Rimsky?

What is this nonsense?'

'Kindly do not worry, Messire,' responded Azazello, and he turned to

Varenukha: 'Mustn't be rude on the telephone. Mustn’t tell lies on the

telephone. Understand? Will you do it again?'

Everything went giddy with joy in Varenukha’s head, his face beamed,

and, not knowing what he was saying, he began to murmur:

'Verily … that is, I mean to say… Your ma… right after dinner…'

Varenukha pressed his hands to his chest, looking beseechingly at Azazello.

'All right. Home with you!' the latter said, and Varenukha dissolved.

'Now all of you leave me alone with them,' ordered Woland, pointing to

the master and Margarita.

Woland’s order was obeyed instantly. After some silence, Woland said to

the master:

'So it’s back to the Arbat basement? And who is going to write? And the

dreams, the inspiration?'

'I have no more dreams, or inspiration either,' replied the master. 'No

one around me interests me, except her.' He again put his hand on

Margarita’s head. 'I'm broken, I’m bored, and I want to be in the basement.'

'And your novel? Pilate?'

'It's hateful to me, this novel,' replied the master, 'I went through

too much because of it.'

'I implore you,' Margarita begged plaintively, 'don't talk like that.

Why do you torment me? You know I put my whole life into this work.' Turning

to Woland, Margarita also added: 'Don't listen to him, Messire, he’s too

worn out.'

'But you must write about something,' said Woland. 'If you’ve exhausted

the procurator, well, then why not start portraying, say, this Aloisy …'

The master smiled.

'Lapshennikova wouldn’t publish that, and, besides, it’s not

interesting.'

'And what are you going to live on? You’ll have a beggarly existence.'

'Willingly, willingly,' replied the master, drawing Margarita to him.

He put his arm around her shoulders and added: 'She'll see reason,

she’ll leave me …'

'I doubt that,' Woland said through his teeth and went on: 'And so, the

man who wrote the story of Pontius Pilate goes to the basement with the

intention of settling by the lamp and leading a beggarly existence?'

Margarita separated herself from the master and began speaking very

ardently:

'I did all I could. I whispered the most tempting thing to him. And he

refused.'

'I know what you whispered to him,' Woland retorted, 'but it is not the

most tempting thing. And to you I say,' he turned, smiling, to the master,

'that your novel will still bring you surprises.'

'That's very sad,' replied the master.

'No, no, it’s not sad,' said Woland, 'nothing terrible. Well, Margarita

Nikolaevna, it has all been done. Do you have any claims against me?'

'How can you, oh, how can you, Messire! …'

" Then take this from me as a memento,' said Woland, and he drew from

under the pillow a small golden horseshoe studded with diamonds.

'No, no, no, why on earth!'

'You want to argue with me?' Woland said, smiling.

Since Margarita had no pockets in her cloak, she put the horseshoe in a

napkin and tied it into a knot. Here something amazed her. She looked at the

window through which the moon was shining and said:

`And here’s something I don’t understand … How is it midnight,

midnight, when it should have been morning long ago?'

`It's nice to prolong the festive night a little,' replied Woland.

'Well, I wish you happiness!'

Margarita prayerfully reached out both hands to Woland, but did not

dare approach him and softly exclaimed:

'Farewell! Farewell!'

'Goodbye,' said Woland.

And, Margarita in the black cloak, the master in the hospital robe,

they walked out to the corridor of the jeweller’s wife’s apartment, where a

candle was burning and Woland’s retinue was waiting for them. When they left

the corridor, Hella was carrying the suitcase containing the novel and

Margarita Nikolaevna’s few possessions, and the cat was helping Hella.

At the door of the apartment, Koroviev made his bows and disappeared,

while the rest went to accompany them downstairs. The stairway was empty. As

they passed the third-floor landing, something thudded softly, but no one

paid any attention to it. Just at the exit from the sixth stairway, Azazello

blew upwards, and as soon as they came out to the courtyard, where the

moonlight did not reach, they saw a man in a cap and boots asleep, and

obviously dead asleep, on the doorstep, as well as a big black car by the

entrance with its lights turned off. Through the windshield could be dimly

seen the silhouette of a rook.

They were just about to get in when Margarita cried softly in despair

'Oh, God, I’ve lost the horseshoe!'

'Get into the car,' said Azazello, 'and wait for me. I’ll be right

back, I only have to see what’s happened.' And he went back in.

What had happened was the following: shortly before Margarita and the

master left with their escort, a little dried-up woman carrying a can and a

bag came out of apartment no.48, which was located just under the jeweller’s

wife’s apartment. This was that same Annushka who on Wednesday, to Berlioz’s

misfortune, had spilled sunflower oil by the turnstile.

No one knew, and probably no one will ever know, what this woman did in

Moscow or how she maintained her existence. The only thing known about her

is that she could be seen every day either with the can, or with bag and can

together, in the kerosene shop, or in the market, or under the gateway, or

on the stairs, but most often in the kitchen of apartment no.48, of which

this Annushka was one of the tenants. Besides that and above all it was

known that wherever she was or wherever she appeared, a scandal would at

once break out, and, besides, that she bore the nickname of 'the Plague'.

Annushka the Plague always got up very early for some reason, and today

something got her up in the wee hours, just past midnight. The key turned in

the door, Annushka’s nose stuck out of it, then the whole of her stuck out,

she slammed the door behind her, and was about to set off somewhere when a

door banged on the landing above, someone hurded down the stairs and,

bumping into Annushka, flung her aside so that she struck the back of her

head against the wall.

'Where's the devil taking you in nothing but your underpants?' Annushka

shrieked, clutching her head.

The man in nothing but his underwear, carrying a suitcase and wearing a

cap, his eyes shut, answered Annushka in a wild, sleepy voice:

'The boiler … the vitriol… the cost of the whitewashing alone…'

And, bursting into tears, he barked: 'Out!'

Here he dashed, not further down, but back up to where the window had

been broken by the economist’s foot, and out this window he flew, legs up,

into the courtyard. Annushka even forgot about her head, gasped, and rushed

to the window herself. She lay down on her stomach on the landing and stuck

her head into the yard, expecting to see the man with the suitcase smashed

to death on the asphalt, lit up by the courtyard lantern. But on the asphalt

courtyard there was precisely nothing.

It only remained to suppose that a sleepy and strange person had flown

out of the house like a bird, leaving not a trace behind him. Annushka

crossed herself and thought: 'Yes, indeed, a nice little apartment, that

number fifty! It’s not for nothing people say … Oh, a nice little

apartment!'

Before she had time to think it through, the door upstairs slammed

again, and a second someone came running down. Annushka pressed herself to

the wall and saw a rather respectable citizen with a little beard, but, as

it seemed to Annushka, with a slightly piggish face, dart past her and, like

the first one, leave the house through the window, again without ever

thinking of smashing himself on the asphalt. Annushka had already forgotten

the purpose of her outing and stayed on the stairway, crossing herself,

gasping, and talking to herself.

A third one, without a little beard, with a round, clean-shaven face,

in a Tolstoy blouse, came running down a short while later and fluttered out

the window in just the same way.

To Annushka’s credit it must be said that she was inquisitive and

decided to wait and see whether any new miracles would occur. The door above

was opened again, and now a whole company started down, not at a run, but

normally, as everybody walks. Annushka darted away from the window, went to

her own door, opened it in a trice, hid behind it, and her eye, frenzied

with curiosity, glittered in the chink she left for herself.

Someone, possibly sick or possibly not, but strange, pale, with a

stubbly beard, in a black cap and some sort of robe, walked down with

unsteady steps. He was led carefully under the arm by a lady in a black

cassock, as it seemed to Annushka in the darkness. The lady was possibly

barefoot, possibly wearing some sort of transparent, obviously imported,

shoes that were torn to shreds. Pah! Shoes my eye! … The lady is naked!

Yes, the cassock has been thrown right over her naked body! … `A nice

little apartment! …' Everything in Annushka’s soul sang in anticipation of

what she was going to tell the neighbours the next day.

The strangely dressed lady was followed by a completely naked one

carrying a suitcase, and next to the suitcase a huge black cat was knocking

about. Annushka almost squeaked something out loud, rubbing her eyes.

Bringing up the rear of the procession was a short, limping foreigner, blind

in one eye, without a jacket, in a white formal waistcoat and tie. This

whole company marched downstairs past Annushka. Here something thudded on

the landing.

As the steps died away, Annushka slipped like a snake from behind the

door, put the can down by the wall, dropped to the floor on her stomach, and

began feeling around. Her hands came upon a napkin with something heavy in

it. Annushka’s eyes started out of her head when she unwrapped the package.

Annushka kept bringing the precious thing right up to her eyes, and

these eyes burned with a perfectly wolfish fire. A whirlwind formed in

Annushka’s head:

'I see nothing, I know nothing! … To my nephew? Or cut it in pieces?

… I could pick the stones out, and then one by one: one to Petrovka,

another to Smolensky … And — I see nothing, I know nothing!'

Annushka hid the found object in her bosom, grabbed the can, and was

about to slip back into her apartment, postponing her trip to town, when

that same one with the white chest, without a jacket, emerged before her

from devil knows where and quietly whispered:

'Give me the horseshoe and napkin!'

`What napkin horseshoe?' Annushka asked, shamming very artfully. 'I

don’t know about any napkins. Are you drunk, citizen, or what?'

With fingers as hard as the handrails of a bus, and as cold, the

white-chested one, without another word, squeezed Annushka’s throat so that

he completely stopped all access of air to her chest. The can dropped from

Annushka’s hand on to the floor. After keeping Annushka without air for some

time, the jacketless foreigner removed his fingers from her throat. Gulping

air, Annushka smiled.

'Ah, the little horseshoe?' she said. This very second! So it’s your

little horseshoe? And I see it lying there in a napkin, I pick it up so that

no one takes it, and then just try finding it!'

Having received the little horseshoe and napkin, the foreigner started

bowing and scraping before Annushka, shook her hand firmly, and thanked her

warmly, with the strongest of foreign accents, in the following terms:

'I am deeply grateful to you, ma’am. This little horseshoe is dear to

me as a memento. And, for having preserved it, allow me to give you two

hundred roubles.' And he took the money from his waistcoat pocket at once

and handed it to Annushka.

She, smiling desperately, could only keep exclaiming:

'Ah, I humbly thank you! Merci! Merci!'

The generous foreigner cleared a whole flight of stairs in one leap,

but, before decamping definitively, shouted from below, now without any

accent:

'You old witch, if you ever pick up somebody else’s stuff again, take

it to the police, don’t hide it in your bosom!'

Feeling a ringing and commotion in her head from all these events on

the stairs, Annushka went on shouting for some time by inertia:

'Merci! Merci! Merci! …' But the foreigner was long gone. And so was

the car in the courtyard. Having returned Woland’s gift to Margarita,

Azazello said goodbye to her and asked if she was comfortably seated, Hella

exchanged smacking kisses with Margarita, the cat kissed her hand, everyone

waved to the master, who collapsed lifelessly and motionlessly in the corner

of the seat, waved to the rook, and at once melted into air, considering it

unnecessary to take the trouble of climbing the stairs. The rook turned the

lights on and rolled out through the gates, past the man lying dead asleep

under the archway. And the lights of the big black car disappeared among the

other lights on sleepless and noisy Sadovaya.

An hour later, in the basement of the small house in the lane off the

Arbat, in the front room, where everything was the same as it had been

before that terrible autumn night last year, at the table covered with a

velvet tablecloth, under the shaded lamp, near which stood a little vase of

lilies of the valley, Margarita sat and wept quietly from the shock she had

experienced and from happiness. The notebook disfigured by fire lay before

her, and next to it rose a pile of intact notebooks. The little house was

silent. On a sofa in the small adjoining room, covered with the hospital

robe, the master lay in a deep sleep. His even breathing was noiseless.

Having wept her fill, Margarita went to the intact notebooks and found

the place she had been rereading before she met Azazello under the Kremlin

wall. Margarita did not want to sleep. She caressed the manuscript tenderly,

as one caresses a favourite cat, and kept turning it in her hands, examining

it from all sides, now pausing at the tide page, now opening to the end. A

terrible thought suddenly swept over her, that this was all sorcery, that

the notebooks would presently disappear from sight, and she would be in her

bedroom in the old house, and that on waking up she would have to go and

drown herself. But this was her last terrible thought, an echo of the long

suffering she had lived through. Nothing disappeared, the all-powerful

Woland really was all-powerful, and as long as she liked, even till dawn

itself, Margarita could rustle the pages of the notebooks, gaze at them,

kiss them, and read over the words:

'The darkness that came from the Mediterranean Sea covered the city

hated by the procurator …' Yes, the darkness…

CHAPTER 25. How the Procurator Tried to Save Judas of Kiriath

The darkness that came from the Mediterranean Sea covered the city

hated by the procurator. The hanging bridges connecting the temple with the

dread Antonia Tower disappeared, the abyss descended from the sky and

flooded the winged gods over the hippodrome, the Hasmonaean Palace with its

loopholes, the bazaars, caravanserais, lanes, pools … Yershalaim — the

great city — vanished as if it had never existed in the world. Everything

was devoured by the darkness, which frightened every living thing in

Yershalaim and round about. The strange cloud was swept from seaward towards

the end of the day, the fourteenth day of the spring month of Nisan.

It was already heaving its belly over Bald Skull, where the

executioners hastily stabbed the condemned men, it heaved itself over the

temple of Yershalaim, crept in smoky streams down the temple hill, and

flooded the Lower City. It poured through windows and drove people from the

crooked streets into the houses. It was in no hurry to yield up its moisture

and gave off only light. Each time the black smoky brew was ripped by fire,

the great bulk of the temple with its glittering scaly roof flew up out of

the pitch darkness. But the fire would instantly go out, and the temple

would sink into the dark abyss. Time and again it grew out of it and fell

back, and each time its collapse was accompanied by the thunder of

catastrophe.

Other tremulous glimmers called out of the abyss the palace of Herod

the Great, standing opposite the temple on the western hill, and its dread,

eyeless golden statues flew up into the black sky, stretching their arms out

to it. But again the heavenly fire would hide, and heavy claps of thunder

would drive the golden idols into the darkness.

The downpour burst unexpectedly, and then the storm turned into a

hurricane. In the very place where the procurator and the high priest had

had their talk around noon, by the marble bench in the garden, with the

sound of a cannon shot, a cypress snapped like a reed. Along with the watery

spray and hail, broken-off roses, magnolia leaves, small twigs and sand were

swept on to the balcony under the columns. The hurricane racked the garden.

At that time there was only one man under the columns, and that man was

the procurator.

Now he was not sitting in the chair but lying on a couch by a small,

low table set with food and jugs of wine. Another couch, empty, stood on the

other side of the table. By the procurator’s feet spread an unwiped red

puddle, as if of blood, with pieces of a broken jug. The servant who was

setting the table for the procurator before the storm became disconcerted

for some reason under his gaze, grew alarmed at having displeased him in

some way, and the procurator, getting angry with him, smashed the jug on the

mosaic floor, saying:

" Why don’t you look me in the face when you serve me? Have you stolen

something?'

The African’s black face turned grey, mortal fear showed in his eyes,

he trembled and almost broke a second jug, but the procurator’s wrath flew

away as quickly as it had flown in. The African rushed to remove the pieces

and wipe up the puddle, but the procurator waved his hand and the slave ran

away. The puddle remained.

Now, during the hurricane, the African was hiding near a niche in which

stood the statue of a white, naked woman with a drooping head, afraid of

appearing before the procurator’s eyes at the wrong time, and at the same

time fearing to miss the moment when the procurator might call for him.

Lying on the couch in the storm’s twilight, the procurator poured wine

into the cup himself, drank it in long draughts, occasionally touched the

bread, crumbled it, swallowed small pieces, sucked out an oyster from time

to time, chewed a lemon, and drank again.

Had it not been for the roaring of the water, had it not been for the

thunderclaps that seemed to threaten to lay flat the roof of the palace, had

it not been for the rattle of hail hammering on the steps of the balcony,

one might have heard that the procurator was muttering something, talking to

himself. And if the unsteady glimmering of the heavenly fire had turned into

a constant light, an observer would have been able to see that the

procurator’s face, with eyes inflamed by recent insomnia and wine, showed

impatience, that the procurator was not only looking at the two white roses

drowned in the red puddle, but constantly turned his face towards the

garden, meeting the watery spray and sand, that he was waiting for someone,

impatiently waiting.

Time passed, and the veil of water before the procurator’s eyes began

to thin. Furious as it was, the hurricane was weakening. Branches no longer

cracked and fell. The thunderclaps and flashes came less frequently. It was

no longer a violet coverlet trimmed with white, but an ordinary, grey

rear-guard cloud that floated over Yershalaim. The storm was being swept

towards the Dead Sea.

Now it was possible to hear separately the noise of the rain and the

noise of water rushing along the gutters and also straight down the steps of

that stairway upon which the procurator had walked in the afternoon to

announce the sentence in the square. And finally the hitherto drowned-out

fountain made itself heard. It was growing lighter. Blue windows appeared in

the grey veil fleeing eastward.

Here, from far off, breaking through the patter of the now quite

weakened rainfall, there came to the procurator’s ears a weak sound of

trumpets and the tapping of several hundred hoofs. Hearing this, the

procurator stirred, and his face livened up. The ala was coming back from

Bald Mountain. Judging by the sound, it was passing through the same square

where the sentence had been announced.

At last the procurator heard the long-awaited footsteps and a slapping

on the stairs leading to the upper terrace of the garden, just in front of

the balcony. The procurator stretched his neck and his eyes glinted with an

expression of joy.

Between the two marble lions there appeared first a hooded head, then a

completely drenched man with his cloak clinging to his body. It was the same

man who had exchanged whispers with the procurator in a darkened room of the

palace before the sentencing, and who during the execution had sat on a

three-legged stool playing with a twig.

Heedless of puddles, the man in the hood crossed the garden terrace,

stepped on to the mosaic floor of the balcony, and, raising his arm, said in

a high, pleasant voice:

'Health and joy to the procurator!' The visitor spoke in Latin.

'Gods!' exclaimed Pilate. 'There's not a dry stitch on you! What a

hurricane! Eh? I beg you to go inside immediately. Do me a favour and change

your clothes.'

The visitor threw back his hood, revealing a completely wet head with

hair plastered to the forehead, and, showing a polite smile on his

clean-shaven face, began refusing to change, insisting that a little rain

would not hurt him.

'I won’t hear of it,' Pilate replied and clapped his hands. With that

he called out the servants who were hiding from him, and told them to take

care of the visitor and then serve the hot course immediately.

The procurator’s visitor required very little time to dry his hair,

change his clothes and shoes, and generally put himself in order, and he

soon appeared on the balcony in dry sandals, a dry crimson military cloak,

and with slicked-down hair.

Just then the sun returned to Yershalaim, and, before going to drown in

the Mediterranean Sea, sent farewell rays to the city hated by the

procurator and gilded the steps of the balcony. The fountain revived

completely and sang away with all its might, doves came out on the sand,

cooing, hopping over broken branches, pecking at something in the wet sand.

The red puddle was wiped up, the broken pieces were removed, meat steamed on

the table.

'I wait to hear the procurator’s orders,' said the visitor, approaching

the table.

'But you won’t hear anything until you sit down and drink some wine,'

Pilate replied courteously and pointed to the other couch.

The visitor reclined, a servant poured some thick red wine into his

cup. Another servant, leaning cautiously over Pilate’s shoulder, filled the

procurator’s cup. After that, he motioned for the two servants to withdraw.

While the visitor drank and ate, Pilate, sipping his wine, kept

glancing with narrowed eyes at his guest. The man who had come to Pilate was

middle-aged, with a very pleasant, rounded and neat face and a fleshy mouth.

His hair was of some indeterminate colour. Now, as it dried, it became

lighter. It would be difficult to establish the man’s nationality. The chief

determinant of his face was perhaps its good-natured expression, which,

however, was not in accord with his eyes, or, rather, not his eyes but the

visitor’s way of looking at his interlocutor. Ordinarily he kept his small

eyes under his lowered, somewhat strange, as if slightly swollen eyelids.

Then the slits of these eyes shone with an unspiteful slyness. It must be

supposed that the procurator’s guest had a propensity for humour. But

occasionally, driving this glittering humour from the slits entirely, the

procurator’s present guest would open his eyelids wide and look at his

interlocutor suddenly and point-blank, as if with the purpose of rapidly

scrutinizing some inconspicuous spot on his interlocutor’s nose. This lasted

only an instant, after which the eyelids would lower again, the slits would

narrow, and once again they would begin to shine with good-naturedness and

sly intelligence.

The visitor did not decline a second cup of wine, swallowed a few

oysters with obvious pleasure, tried some steamed vegetables, ate a piece of

meat. Having eaten his fill, he praised the wine:

`An excellent vintage, Procurator, but it is not Falerno?''

'Caecuba, [2] thirty years old,' the procurator replied courteously.

The guest put his hand to his heart, declined to eat more, declared that he

was full. Then Pilate filled his own cup, and the guest did the same. Both

diners poured some wine from their cups on to the meat platter, and the

procurator, raising his cup, said loudly:

'For us, for thee, Caesar, father of the Romans, best and dearest of

men! …'

After this they finished the wine, and the Africans removed the food

from the table, leaving the fruit and the jugs. Again the procurator

motioned for the servants to withdraw and remained alone with his guest

under the colonnade.

'And so,' Pilate began in a low voice, 'what can you tell me about the

mood of this city?'

He inadvertently turned his eyes to where the colonnades and flat roofs

below, beyond the terraces of the garden, were drying out, gilded by the

last rays.

`I believe, Procurator,' the guest replied, `that the mood of

Yershalaim is now satisfactory.'

'So it can be guaranteed that there is no threat of further disorders?'

'Only one thing can be guaranteed in this world,' the guest replied,

glancing tenderly at the procurator, 'the power of great Caesar.'

'May the gods grant him long life!' Pilate picked up at once, 'and

universal peace!' He paused and then continued: 'So you believe the troops

can now be withdrawn?'

'I believe that the cohort of the Lightning legion can go,' the guest

replied and added: 'It would be good if it paraded through the city in

farewell.'

'A very good thought,' the procurator approved, 'I will dismiss it the

day after tomorrow, and go myself, and — I swear to you by the feast of the

twelve gods, [3] by the lares [4] I swear — I’d give a lot to be able to do

so today!'

'The procurator doesn’t like Yershalaim?' the guest asked

good-naturedly.

`Good heavens,' the procurator exclaimed, smiling, `there's no more

hopeless place on earth. I’m not even speaking of natural conditions — I get

sick every time I have to come here — but that’s only half the trouble! …

But these feasts! … Magicians, sorcerers, wizards, these flocks of

pilgrims! … Fanatics, fanatics! … Just take this messiah [5] they

suddenly started expecting this year! Every moment you think you’re about to

witness the most unpleasant bloodshed… The shifting of troops all the

time, reading denunciations and calumnies, half of which, moreover, are

written against yourself! You must agree, it’s boring. Oh, if it weren’t for

the imperial service!'

'Yes, the feasts are hard here,' agreed the guest.

'I wish with all my heart that they should be over soon,' Pilate added

energetically. `I will finally have the possibility of going back to

Caesarea. Believe me, this delirious construction of Herod’s' - the

procurator waved his arm along the colonnade, to make clear that he was

speaking of the palace — 'positively drives me out of my mind! I cannot

spend my nights in it. The world has never known a stranger architecture!

… Well, but let’s get back to business. First of all, this cursed

Bar-Rabban — you’re not worried about him?'

And here the guest sent his peculiar glance at the procurator’s cheek.

But the latter, frowning squeamishly, gazed into the distance with

bored eyes, contemplating the part of the city that lay at his feet and was

fading into the twilight. The guest’s eyes also faded, and his eyelids

lowered.

'It may be supposed that Bar has now become as harmless as a lamb,' the

guest began to say, and wrinkles appeared on his round face. `It would be

awkward for him to rebel now.'

'Too famous?' Pilate asked with a smirk.

" The procurator has subtly understood the problem, as always.'

'But in any case,' the procurator observed with concern, and the thin,

long finger with the black stone of its ring was raised, 'there must be…'

'Oh, the procurator can be certain that as long as I am in Judea, Bar

will not take a step without having someone on his heels.'

'Now I am at peace — as I always am, incidentally, when you are here.'

The procurator is too kind!'

`And now I ask you to tell me about the execution,' said the

procurator.

'What precisely interests the procurator?'

Were there any attempts on the part of the crowd to display

rebelliousness? That is the main thing, of course.'

'None,' replied the guest.

'Very good. Did you personally establish that death took place?'

" The procurator may be certain of it.'

`And tell me … were they given the drink before being hung on the

posts?'[6]

'Yes. But he,' here the guest closed his eyes, 'refused to drink it.'

'Who, precisely?' asked Pilate.

`Forgive me, Hegemon!' the guest exclaimed. `Did I not name him?

Ha-Nozri!'

'Madman!' said Pilate, grimacing for some reason. A little nerve began

to twitch under his left eye. To die of sunburn! Why refuse what is offered

by law! In what terms did he refuse it?'

'He said,' the guest answered, again closing his eyes, 'that he was

grateful and laid no blame for the taking of his life.'

'On whom?' Pilate asked in a hollow voice.

That he did not say, Hegemon…'

'Did he try to preach anything in the soldiers' presence?'

'No, Hegemon, he was not loquacious this time. The only thing he said

was that among human vices he considered cowardice one of the first.'[7]

This was said with regard to what?' the guest heard a suddenly cracked

voice.

That was impossible to understand. He generally behaved himself

strangely — as always, however.'

'What was this strangeness?'

'He kept trying to peer into the eyes of one or another of those around

him, and kept smiling some sort of lost smile.'

'Nothing else?' asked the hoarse voice.

'Nothing else.'

The procurator knocked against the cup as he poured himself some wine.

After draining it to the very bottom, he spoke:

The matter consists in the following: though we have been unable — so

far at least — to discover any admirers or followers of his, it is none the

less impossible to guarantee that there are none.'

The guest listened attentively, inclining his head.

'And so, to avoid surprises of any sort,' the procurator continued, 'I

ask you to remove the bodies of all three executed men from the face of the

earth, immediately and without any noise, and to bury them in secrecy and

silence, so that not another word or whisper is heard of them.'

'Understood, Hegemon,' replied the guest, and he got up, saying:

'In view of the complexity and responsibility of the matter, allow me

to go immediately.'

'No, sit down again,' said Pilate, stopping his guest with a gesture,

`there are two more questions. First, your enormous merits in this most

difficult job at the post of head of the secret service for the procurator

of Judea give me the pleasant opportunity of reporting them to Rome.'

Here the guest’s face turned pink, he rose and bowed to the procurator,

saying:

'I merely fulfil my duty in the imperial service.'

`But I wanted to ask you,' the hegemon continued, `in case you’re

offered a transfer elsewhere with a raise — to decline it and remain here. I

wouldn’t want to part with you for anything. Let them reward you in some

other way.'

'I am happy to serve under your command, Hegemon.'

'That pleases me very much. And so, the second question. It concerns

this … what’s his name … Judas of Kiriath.'

Here the guest sent the procurator his glance, and at once, as was his

custom, extinguished it.

They say,' the procurator continued, lowering his voice, `that he

supposedly got some money for receiving this madman so cordially?'

'Will get,' the head of the secret service quietly corrected Pilate.

'And is it a large sum?'

That no one can say, Hegemon.'

'Not even you?' said the hegemon, expressing praise by his amazement.

'Alas, not even I,' the guest calmly replied. «But he will get the

money this evening, that I do know. He is to be summoned tonight to the

palace of Kaifa.'

'Ah, that greedy old man of Kiriath!' the procurator observed, smiling.

'He is an old man, isn’t he?'

The procurator is never mistaken, but he is mistaken this time,' the

guest replied courteously, 'me man from Kiriath is a young man.'

'You don’t say! Can you describe his character for me? A fanatic?'

'Oh, no, Procurator.'

'So. And anything else?''

'Very handsome.'

'What else? He has some passion, perhaps?'

'It is difficult to have such precise knowledge about everyone in this

huge city, Procurator …'

'Ah, no, no, Aphranius! Don’t play down your merits.'

'He has one passion, Procurator.' The guest made a tiny pause. 'A

passion for money.'

'And what is his occupation?'

Aphranius raised his eyes, thought, and replied:

'He works in the money-changing shop of one of his relatives.'

'Ah, so, so, so, so.' Here the procurator fell silent, looked around to

be sure there was no one on the balcony, and then said quietly:

The thing is this — I have just received information that he is going

to be killed tonight.'

This time the guest not only cast his glance at the procurator, but

even held it briefly, and after that replied:

'You spoke too flatteringly of me, Procurator. In my opinion, I do not

deserve your report. This information I do not have.'

'You deserve the highest reward,' the procurator replied. 'But there is

such information.'

'May I be so bold as to ask who supplied it?'

`Permit me not to say for the time being, the more so as it is

accidental, obscure and uncertain. But it is my duty to foresee everything.

That is my job, and most of all I must trust my presentiment, for it has

never yet deceived me. The information is that one of Ha-Nozri's secret

friends, indignant at this money-changer's monstrous betrayal, is plotting

with his accomplices to kill him tonight, and to foist the money paid for

the betrayal on the high priest, with a note:

" I return the cursed money." '

The head of the secret service cast no more of his unexpected glances

at the hegemon, but went on listening to him, narrowing his eyes, as Pilate

went on:

'Imagine, is it going to be pleasant for the high priest to receive

such a gift on the night of the feast?'

'Not only not pleasant,' the guest replied, smiling, 'but I believe,

Procurator, that it will cause a very great scandal.'

'I am of the same opinion myself. And therefore I ask you to occupy

yourself with this matter — that is, to take all measures to protect Judas

of Kiriath.'

'The hegemon’s order will be carried out,' said Aphranius, 'but I must

reassure the hegemon: the evil-doers' plot is very hard to bring off. Only

think,' the guest looked over his shoulder as he spoke and went on, 'to

track the man down, to kill him, and besides that to find out how much he

got, and manage to return the money to Kaifa, and all that in one night?

Tonight?'

`And none the less he will be killed tonight,' Pilate stubbornly

repeated. `I have a presentiment, I tell you! Never once has it deceived

me.' Here a spasm passed over the procurator’s face, and he rubbed his hands

briskly.

'Understood,' the guest obediently replied, stood up, straightened out,

and suddenly asked sternly: 'So they will kill him, Hegemon?'

'Yes,' answered Pilate, 'and all hope lies in your efficiency alone,

which amazes everyone.'

The guest adjusted the heavy belt under his cloak and said:

'I salute you and wish you health and joy!'

'Ah, yes,' Pilate exclaimed softly, 'I completely forgot! I owe you

something! …'

The guest was amazed.

'Really, Procurator, you owe me nothing.'

'But of course! As I was riding into Yershalaim, remember, the crowd of

beggars … I wanted to throw them some money, but I didn’t have any, and so

I took it from you.'

'Oh, Procurator, it was a trifle!'

'One ought to remember trifles, too.' Here Pilate turned, picked up the

cloak that lay on the chair behind him, took a leather bag from under it,

and handed it to the guest. The man bowed, accepting it, and put the bag

under his cloak.

'I expect a report on the burial,' said Pilate, 'and also on the matter

to do with Judas of Kiriath, this same night, do you hear, Aphranius, this

night. The convoy will have orders to awaken me the moment you appear. I’ll

be expecting you.'

'I salute you,' the head of the secret service said and, turning, left

the balcony. One could hear the wet sand crunch under his feet, then the

stamp of his boots on the marble between the lions, then his legs were cut

off, then his body, and finally the hood also disappeared. Only here did the

procurator notice that the sun was gone and twilight had come.

CHAPTER 26. The Burial

And perhaps it was the twilight that caused such a sharp change in the

procurator’s appearance. He aged, grew hunched as if before one’s eyes, and,

besides that, became alarmed. Once he looked around and gave a start for

some reason, casting an eye on the empty chair with the cloak thrown over

its back. The night of the feast was approaching, the evening shadows played

their game, and the tired procurator probably imagined that someone was

sitting in the empty chair. Yielding to his faint-heartedness and ruffling

the cloak, the procurator let it drop and began rushing about the balcony,

now rubbing his hands, now rushing to the table and seizing the cup, now

stopping and staring senselessly at the mosaics of the floor, as if trying

to read something written there … It was the second time in the same day

that anguish came over him.

Rubbing his temple, where only a dull, slightly aching reminder of the

morning’s infernal pain lingered, the procurator strained to understand what

the reason for his soul’s torments was. And he quickly understood it, but

attempted to deceive himself. It was clear to him that that afternoon he had

lost something irretrievably, and that he now wanted to make up for the loss

by some petty, worthless and, above all, belated actions. The deceiving of

himself consisted in the procurator’s trying to convince himself that these

actions, now, this evening, were no less important than the morning’s

sentence. But in this the procurator succeeded very poorly.

At one of his turns, he stopped abruptly and whistled. In response to

this whistle, a low barking resounded in the twilight, and a gigantic

sharp-eared dog with a grey pelt and a gold-studded collar sprang from the

garden on to the balcony.

'Banga, Banga,' the procurator cried weakly.

The dog rose on his hind legs, placed his front paws on his master’s

shoulders, nearly knocking him to the floor, and licked his cheek. The

procurator sat down in the armchair. Banga, his tongue hanging out, panting

heavily, lay down at his master’s feet, and the joy in the dog’s eyes meant

that the storm was over, the only thing in the world that the fearless dog

was afraid of, and also that he was again there, next to the man whom he

loved, respected, and considered the most powerful man in the world, the

ruler of all men, thanks to whom the dog considered himself a privileged,

lofty and special being. Lying down at his master’s feet without even

looking at him, but looking into the dusky garden, the dog nevertheless

realized at once that trouble had befallen his master. He therefore changed

his position, got up, came from the side and placed his front paws and head

on the procurator’s knees, smearing the bottom of his cloak with wet sand.

Banga’s actions were probably meant to signify that he comforted his master

and was ready to meet misfortune with him. He also attempted to express this

with his eyes, casting sidelong glances at his master, and with his alert,

pricked-up ears. Thus the two of them, the dog and man who loved each other,

met the night of the feast on the balcony.

Just then the procurator’s guest was in the midst of a great bustle.

After leaving the upper terrace of the garden before the balcony, he

went down the stairs to the next terrace of the garden, turned right and

came to the barracks which stood on the palace grounds. In these barracks

the two centuries that had come with the procurator for the feast in

Yershalaim were quartered, as was the procurator’s secret guard, which was

under the command of this very guest. The guest did not spend much time in

the barracks, no more than ten minutes, but at the end of these ten minutes,

three carts drove out of the barracks yard loaded with entrenching tools and

a barrel of water. The carts were escorted by fifteen mounted men in grey

cloaks. Under their escort the carts left the palace grounds by the rear

gate, turned west, drove through gates in the city wall, and followed a path

first to the Bethlehem road, then down this road to the north, came to the

intersection by the Hebron gate, and then moved down the Jaffa road, along

which the procession had gone during the day with the men condemned to

death. By that time it was already dark, and the moon appeared on the

horizon.

Soon after the departure of the carts with their escorting detachment,

the procurator’s guest also left the palace grounds on horseback, having

changed into a dark, worn chiton. The guest went not out of the city but

into it. Some time later he could be seen approaching the Antonia Fortress,

located to the north and in the vicinity of the great temple.

The guest did not spend much time in the fortress either, and then his

tracks turned up in the Lower City, in its crooked and tangled streets. Here

the guest now came riding a mule.

Knowing the city well, the guest easily found the street he wanted. It

was called Greek Street, because there were several Greek shops on it, among

them one that sold carpets. Precisely by this shop, the guest stopped his

mule, dismounted, and tied it to the ring by the gate. The shop was closed

by then. The guest walked through the little gate beside the entrance to the

shop and found himself in a small square courtyard surrounded on three sides

by sheds. Turning a corner inside the yard, the guest came to the stone

terrace of a house all twined with ivy and looked around. Both the little

house and the sheds were dark, no lamps were lit yet. The guest called

softly:

'Niza!'

At this call a door creaked, and in the evening twilight a young woman

without a veil appeared on the terrace. She leaned over the railing, peering

anxiously, wishing to know who had come. Recognizing the visitor, she smiled

amiably to him, nodded her head, waved her hand.

'Are you alone?' Aphranius asked softly in Greek.

'Yes,' the woman on the terrace whispered, `my husband left for

Caesarea in the morning.' Here the woman looked back at the door and added

in a whisper: 'But the serving-woman is at home.' Here she made a gesture

meaning 'Come in'.

Aphranius looked around and went up the stone steps. After which both

he and the woman disappeared into the house. With this woman Aphranius spent

very little time, certainly no more than five minutes. After which he left

the house and the terrace, pulled the hood down lower on his eyes, and went

out to the street. Just then the lamps were being lit in the houses, the

pre-festive tumult was still considerable, and Aphranius on his mule lost

himself in the stream of riders and passers-by. His subsequent route is not

known to anyone.

The woman Aphranius called 'Niza', left alone, began changing her

clothes, and was hurrying greatly. But difficult though it was for her to

find the things she needed in the dark room, she did not light a lamp or

call the serving-woman. Only after she was ready and her head was covered by

a dark veil did the sound of her voice break the silence in the little

house:

'If anyone asks for me, say I went to visit Enanta.'

The old serving-woman's grumbling was heard in the darkness:

'Enanta? Ah, this Enanta! Didn’t your husband forbid you to visit her?

She’s a procuress, your Enanta! Wait till I tell your husband …'

'Well, well, be quiet,' Niza replied and, like a shadow, slipped out of

the house. Niza’s sandals pattered over the stone flags of the yard. The

serving-woman, grumbling, shut the door to the terrace. Niza left her house.

Just at that time, from another lane in the Lower City, a twisting lane

that ran down from ledge to ledge to one of the city pools, from the gates

of an unsightly house with a blank wall looking on to the lane and windows

on the courtyard, came a young man with a neatly trimmed beard, wearing a

white kefia falling to his shoulders, a new pale blue festive tallith with

tassels at the bottom, and creaking new sandals. The handsome,

aquiline-nosed young fellow, all dressed up for the great feast, walked

briskly, getting ahead of passers-by hurrying home for the solemn meal, and

watched as one window after another lit up. The young man took the street

leading past the bazaar to the palace of the high priest Kaifa, located at

the foot of the temple hill.

Some time later he could be seen entering the gates of Kaifa’s

courtyard. And a bit later still, leaving the same courtyard.

After visiting the palace, where the lamps and torches already blazed,

and where the festive bustle had already begun, the young man started

walking still more briskly, still more joyfully, hastening back to the Lower

City. At the corner where the street flowed into the market-place, amidst

the seething and tumult, he was overtaken by a slight woman, walking with a

dancer’s gait, in a black veil that came down over her eyes. As she overtook

the handsome young man, this woman raised her veil for a moment, cast a

glance in the young man’s direction, yet not only did not slow her pace, but

quickened it, as if trying to escape from the one she had overtaken.

The young man not only noticed this woman, no, he also recognized her,

and, having recognized her, gave a start, halted, looking perplexedly into

her back, and at once set out after her. Almost knocking over some passer-by

carrying a jug, the young man caught up with the woman, and, breathing

heavily with agitation, called out to her:

'Niza!'

The woman turned, narrowed her eyes, her face showing cold vexation,

and replied drily in Greek:

'Ah, it’s you, Judas? I didn’t recognize you at once. That’s good,

though. With us, if someone’s not recognized, it’s a sign he’ll get rich

…'

So agitated that his heart started leaping like a bird under a black

cloth, Judas asked in a faltering whisper, for fear passers-by might

overhear:

'Where are you going, Niza?'

'And what do you want to know that for?' replied Niza, slowing her pace

and looking haughtily at Judas.

Then some sort of childish intonations began to sound in Judas’s voice,

he whispered in bewilderment:

'But why? … We had it all arranged … I wanted to come to you, you

said you’d be home all evening …'

'Ah, no, no,' answered Niza, and she pouted her lower lip capriciously,

which made it seem to Judas that her face, the most beautiful face he had

ever seen in his life, became still more beautiful. `I was bored. You’re

having a feast, and what am I supposed to do? Sit and listen to you sighing

on the terrace? And be afraid, on top of it, that the serving-woman will

tell him about it? No, no, I decided to go out of town and listen to the

nightingales.'

'How, out of town?' the bewildered Judas asked. 'Alone?'

'Of course, alone,' answered Niza.

'Let me accompany you, Judas asked breathlessly. His mind clouded, he

forgot everything in the world and looked with imploring eyes into the blue

eyes of Niza, which now seemed black.

Niza said nothing and quickened her pace.

'Why are you silent, Niza?' Judas said pitifully, adjusting his pace to

hers.

Won’t I be bored with you?' Niza suddenly asked and stopped. Here

Judas’s thoughts became totally confused.

Well, all right,' Niza finally softened, 'come along.'

'But where, where?'

" Wait … let’s go into this yard and arrange it, otherwise I’m afraid

some acquaintance will see me and then they’ll tell my husband I was out

with my lover.'

And here Niza and Judas were no longer in the bazaar, they were

whispering under the gateway of some yard.

'Go to the olive estate,' Niza whispered, pulling the veil over her

eyes and turning away from a man who was coming through the gateway with a

bucket, 'to Gethsemane, beyond the Kedron, understand?'

'Yes, yes, yes…'

`I'll go ahead,' Niza continued, `but don’t follow on my heels. Keep

separate from me. I’ll go ahead … When you cross the stream … you know

where the grotto is?'

'I know, I know…'

'Go up past the olive press and turn to the grotto. I’ll be there. Only

don’t you dare come after me at once, be patient, wait here,' and with these

words Niza walked out the gateway as though she had never spoken with Judas.

Judas stood for some time alone, trying to collect his scattering

thoughts. Among them was the thought of how he was going to explain his

absence from the festal family meal. Judas stood thinking up some lie, but

in his agitation was unable to think through or prepare anything properly,

and slowly walked out the gateway.

Now he changed his route, he was no longer heading towards the Lower

City, but turned back to Kaifa’s palace. The feast had already entered the

city. In the windows around Judas, not only were lights shining, but hymns

of praise were heard. On the pavement, belated passers-by urged their

donkeys on, whipping them up, shouting at them. Judas’s legs carried him by

themselves, and he did not notice how the terrible, mossy Antonia Towers

flew past him, he did not hear the roar of trumpets in the fortress, did not

pay attention to the mounted Roman patrol and its torch that flooded his

path with an alarming light.

Turning after he passed the tower, Judas saw that in the terrible

height above the temple two gigantic five-branched candlesticks blazed. But

even these Judas made out vaguely. It seemed to him that ten lamps of an

unprecedented size lit up over Yershalaim, competing with the light of the

single lamp that was rising ever higher over Yershalaim — the moon.

Now Judas could not be bothered with anything, he headed for the

Gethsemane gate, he wanted to leave the city quickly. At times it seemed to

him that before him, among the backs and faces of passers-by, the dancing

little figure flashed, leading him after her. But this was an illusion.

Judas realized that Niza was significantly ahead of him. Judas rushed past

the money-changing shops and finally got to the Gethsemane gate. There,

burning with impatience, he was still forced to wait. Camels were coming

into the city, and after them rode a Syrian military patrol, which Judas

cursed mentally …

But all things come to an end. The impatient Judas was already beyond

the city wall. To the left of him Judas saw a small cemetery, next to it

several striped pilgrims' tents. Crossing the dusty road flooded with

moonlight, Judas headed for the stream of the Kedron with the intention of

wading across it. The water babbled quietly under Judas’s feet. Jumping from

stone to stone, he finally came out on the Gethsemane bank opposite and saw

with great joy that here the road below the gardens was empty. The

half-ruined gates of the olive estate could already be seen not far away.

After the stuffy city, Judas was struck by the stupefying smell of the

spring night. From the garden a wave of myrtle and acacia from the

Gethsemane glades poured over the fence.

No one was guarding the gateway, there was no one in it, and a few

minutes later Judas was already running under the mysterious shade of the

enormous, spreading olive trees. The road went uphill. Judas ascended,

breathing heavily, at times emerging from the darkness on to patterned

carpets of moonlight, which reminded him of the carpets he had seen in the

shop of Niza’s jealous husband.

A short time later there flashed at Judas’s left hand, in a clearing,

an olive press with a heavy stone wheel and a pile of barrels. There was no

one in the garden, work had ended at sunset, and now over Judas choirs of

nightingales pealed and trilled.

Judas’s goal was near. He knew that on his right in the darkness he

would presently begin to hear the soft whisper of water falling in the

grotto. And so it happened, he heard it. It was getting cooler. Then he

slowed his pace and called softly:

'Niza!'

But instead of Niza, a stocky male figure, detaching itself from a

thick olive trunk, leaped out on the road, and something gleamed in its hand

and at once went out. With a weak cry, Judas rushed back, but a second man

barred his way.

The first man, in front of him, asked Judas:

'How much did you just get? Speak, if you want to save your life!' Hope

flared up in Judas’s heart, and he cried out desperately:

Thirty tetradrachmas!' Thirty tetradrachmas! I have it all with me!

Here’s the money! Take it, but grant me my life!'

The man in front instantly snatched the purse from Judas’s hands. And

at the same instant a knife flew up behind Judas’s back and struck the lover

under the shoulder-blade. Judas was flung forward and thrust out his hands

with clawed fingers into the air. The front man caught Judas on his knife

and buried it up to the hilt in Judas’s heart.

'Ni … za …'Judas said, not in his own high and clear young voice,

but in a low and reproachful one, and uttered not another sound. His body

struck the earth so hard that it hummed.

Then a third figure appeared on the road. This third one wore a cloak

with a hood.

`Don't linger,' he ordered. The killers quickly wrapped the purse

together with a note handed to them by the third man in a piece of hide and

criss-crossed it with twine. The second put the bundle into his bosom, and

then the two killers plunged off the roadsides and the darkness between the

olive trees ate them. The third squatted down by the murdered man and looked

at his face. In the darkness it appeared white as chalk to the gazing man

and somehow spiritually beautiful.

A few seconds later there was not a living man on the road. The

lifeless body lay with outstretched arms. The left foot was in a spot of

moonlight, so that each strap of the sandal could be seen distinctly. The

whole garden of Gethsemane was just then pealing with the song of

nightingales.

Where the two who had stabbed Judas went, no one knows, but the route

of the third man in the hood is known. Leaving the road, he headed into the

thick of the olive trees, making his way south. He climbed over the garden

fence far from the main gate, in the southern corner, where the upper stones

of the masonry had fallen out. Soon he was on the bank of the Kedron. Then

he entered the water and for some time made his way in it, until he saw

ahead the silhouettes of two horses and a man beside them. The horses were

also standing in the stream. The water flowed, washing their hoofs. The

horse-handler mounted one of the horses, the man in the hood jumped on to

the other, and the two slowly walked in the stream, and one could hear the

pebbles crunching under the horses' hoofs. Then the riders left the water,

came out on the Yershalaim bank, and rode slowly under the city wall. Here

the horse-handler separated himself, galloped ahead, and disappeared from

view, while the man in the hood stopped his horse, dismounted on the

deserted road, removed his cloak, turned it inside out, took from under the

cloak a flat helmet without plumes and put it on. Now it was a man in a

military chlamys with a short sword at his hip who jumped on to the horse.

He touched the reins and the fiery cavalry horse set off at a trot,

jolting its rider. It was not a long way — the rider was approaching the

southern gate of Yershalaim.

Under the arch of the gateway the restless flame of torches danced and

leaped. The soldiers on guard from the second century of the Lightning

legion sat on stone benches playing dice. Seeing a military man ride in, the

soldiers jumped up, the man waved his hand to them and rode on into the

city.

The city was flooded with festive lights. The flames of lamps played in

all the windows, and from everywhere, merging into one dissonant chorus,

came hymns of praise. Occasionally glancing into windows that looked on to

the street, the rider could see people at tables set with roast kid and cups

of wine amidst dishes of bitter herbs. Whistling some quiet song, the rider

made his way at an unhurried trot through the deserted streets of the Lower

City, heading for the Antonia Tower, glancing occasionally at the

five-branched candlesticks, such as the world had never seen, blazing above

the temple, or at the moon that hung still higher than the five-branched

candlesticks.

The palace of Herod the Great took no part in the solemnities of the

Passover night. In the auxiliary quarters of the palace, facing to the

south, where the officers of the Roman cohort and the legate of the legion

were stationed, lights burned and there was a feeling of some movement and

life. But the front part, the formal part, which housed the sole and

involuntary occupant of the palace — the procurator — all of it, with its

columns and golden statues, was as if blind under the brightest moon. Here,

inside the palace, darkness and silence reigned.

And the procurator, as he had told Aphranius, would not go inside. He

ordered his bed made up on the balcony, there where he had dined and where

he had conducted the interrogation in the morning. The procurator lay on the

made-up couch, but sleep would not come to him. The bare moon hung high in

the clear sky, and the procurator did not take his eyes off it for several

hours.

Approximately at midnight, sleep finally took pity on the hegemon. With

a spasmodic yawn, the procurator unfastened and threw off his cloak, removed

the belt girded over his shirt, with a broad steel knife in a sheath, placed

it on the chair by his couch, took off his sandals, and stretched out. Banga

got on the bed at once and lay down next to him, head to head, and the

procurator, placing his hand on the dog’s neck, finally closed his eyes.

Only then did the dog also fall asleep.

The couch was in semi-darkness, shielded from the moon by a column, but

a ribbon of moonlight stretched from the porch steps to the bed. And once

the procurator lost connection with what surrounded him in reality, he

immediately set out on the shining road and went up it straight towards the

moon. He even burst out laughing in his sleep from happiness, so wonderful

and inimitable did everything come to be on the transparent, pale blue road.

He walked in the company of Banga, and beside him walked the wandering

philosopher. They were arguing about something very complex and important,

and neither of them could refute the other. They did not agree with each

other in anything, and that made their argument especially interesting and

endless. It went without saying that today’s execution proved to be a sheer

misunderstanding: here this philosopher, who had thought up such an

incredibly absurd thing as that all men are good, was walking beside him,

therefore he was alive. And, of course, it would be terrible even to think

that one could execute such a man. There had been no execution! No

execution! That was the loveliness of this journey up the stairway of the

moon.

There was as much free time as they needed, and the storm would come

only towards evening, and cowardice was undoubtedly one of the most terrible

vices. Thus spoke Yeshua Ha-Nozri. No, philosopher, I disagree with you: it

is the most terrible vice!

He, for example, the present procurator of Judea and former tribune of

a legion, had been no coward that time, in the Valley of the Virgins, when

the fierce German had almost torn Rat-slayer the Giant to pieces. But, good

heavens, philosopher! How can you, with your intelligence, allow yourself to

think that, for the sake of a man who has committed a crime against Caesar,

the procurator of Judea would ruin his career?

'Yes, yes…' Pilate moaned and sobbed in his sleep. Of course he

would. In the morning he still would not, but now, at night, after weighing

everything, he would agree to ruin it. He would do everything to save the

decidedly innocent, mad dreamer and healer from execution!

`Now we shall always be together,'[2] said the ragged wandering

philosopher in his dream, who for some unknown reason had crossed paths with

the equestrian of the golden spear. `Where there’s one of us, straight away

there will be the other! Whenever I am remembered, you will at once be

remembered, too! I, the foundling, the son of unknown parents, and you, the

son of an astrologer-king and a miller’s daughter, the beautiful Pila.'[3]

'Yes, and don’t you forget to remember me, the astrologer’s son,'

Pilate asked in his dream. And securing in his dream a nod from the En-Sarid

[4] beggar who was walking beside him, the cruel procurator of Judea wept

and laughed from joy in his dream.

This was all very good, but the more terrible was the hegemon’s

awakening. Banga growled at the moon, and the pale-blue road, slippery as

though smoothed with oil, fell away before the procurator. He opened his

eyes, and the first thing he remembered was that the execution had been. The

first thing the procurator did was to clutch Banga’s collar with a habitual

gesture, then with sick eyes he began searching for the moon and saw that it

had moved slightly to the side and turned silvery. Its light was being

interfered with by an unpleasant, restless light playing on the balcony

right before his eyes. A torch blazed and smoked in the hand of the

centurion Ratslayer. The holder of it glanced sidelong with fear and spite

at the dangerous beast preparing itself to leap.

'Stay, Banga,' the procurator said in a sick voice and coughed.

Shielding himself from the flame with his hand, he went on: 'Even at

night, even by moonlight, I have no peace! … Oh, gods! … Yours is also a

bad job, Mark. You cripple soldiers…'

Mark gazed at the procurator in great amazement, and the man

recollected himself. To smooth over the unwarranted words, spoken while not

quite awake, the procurator said:

`Don't be offended, centurion. My position, I repeat, is still worse.

What do you want?'

The head of the secret guard is waiting to see you,' Mark reported

calmly.

'Call him, call him,' the procurator ordered, clearing his throat with

a cough, and he began feeling for his sandals with his bare feet. The flame

played on the columns, the centurion’s caligae tramped across the mosaics.

The centurion went out to the garden.

'Even by moonlight I have no peace,' the procurator said to himself,

grinding his teeth.

Instead of the centurion, a man in a hood appeared on the balcony.

'Stay, Banga,' the procurator said quietly and pressed the back of the

dog’s head.

Before beginning to speak, Aphranius, as was his custom, looked around

and stepped into the shadow, and having made sure that, besides Banga, there

were no extra persons on the balcony, he said quietly:

`I ask to be tried, Procurator. You turned out to be right. I was

unable to protect Judas of Kiriath, he has been stabbed to death. I ask to

be tried and retired.'

It seemed to Aphranius that four eyes were looking at him — a dog’s and

a wolf’s.

Aphranius took from under his chlamys a purse stiff with blood, sealed

with two seals.

'This is the bag of money the killers left at the high priest’s house.

The blood on this bag is the blood of Judas of Kiriath.'

'How much is there, I wonder?' asked Pilate, bending over the bag.

'Thirty tetradrachmas.'

The procurator grinned and said:

'Not much.'

Aphranius was silent.

'Where is the murdered man?'

That I do not know,' the visitor, who never parted with his hood, said

with calm dignity. 'We will begin a search in the morning.'

The procurator started, abandoning a sandal strap that refused to be

fastened.

'But you do know for certain that he was killed?'

To this the procurator received a dry response:

'I have been working in Judea for fifteen years, Procurator. I began my

service under Valerius Grams. [5] I do not have to see the corpse in order

to say that a man has been killed, and so I report to you that the one who

was called Judas of Kiriath was stabbed to death several hours ago.'

'Forgive me, Aphranius,' answered Pilate, 'I'm not properly awake yet,

that’s why I said it. I sleep badly,' the procurator grinned, 'I keep seeing

a moonbeam in my sleep. Quite funny, imagine, it’s as if I’m walking along

this moonbeam … And so, I would like to know your thoughts on this matter.

Where are you going to look for him? Sit down, head of the secret

service.'

Aphranius bowed, moved the chair closer to the bed, and sat down,

clanking his sword.

'I am going to look for him not far from the oil press in the garden of

Gethsemane.'

'So, so. And why there, precisely?'

'As I figure it, Hegemon, Judas was not killed in Yershalaim itself,

nor anywhere very far from it, he was killed near Yershalaim.'

`I regard you as one of the outstanding experts in your business. I

don’t know how things are in Rome, but in the colonies you have no equal …

But, explain to me, why are you going to look for him precisely there?'

'I will by no means admit the notion,' Aphranius spoke in a low voice,

`of Judas letting himself be caught by any suspicious people within city

limits. It’s impossible to put a knife into a man secretly in the street.

That means he was lured to a basement somewhere. But the service has already

searched for him in the Lower City and undoubtedly would have found him. He

is not in the city, I can guarantee that. If he was killed far from the

city, this packet of money could not have been dropped off so quickly. He

was killed near the city. They managed to lure him out of the city.'

'I cannot conceive how that could have been done!'

'Yes, Procurator, that is the most difficult question in the whole

affair, and I don’t even know if I will succeed in resolving it.'

'It is indeed mysterious! A believer, on the eve of the feast, goes out

of the city for some unknown reason, leaving the Passover meal, and perishes

there. Who could have lured him, and how? Could it have been done by a

woman?' the procurator asked on a sudden inspiration.

Aphranius replied calmly and weightily:

'By no means, Procurator. That possibility is utterly excluded. One

must reason logically. Who was interested in Judas’s death? Some wandering

dreamers, some circle in which, first of all, there weren’t any women. To

marry, Procurator, one needs money. To bring a person into the world, one

needs the same. But to put a knife into a man with the help of a woman, one

needs very big money, and no vagabond has got it. There was no woman in this

affair, Procurator. Moreover, I will say that such an interpretation of the

murder can only throw us off the track, hinder the investigation, and

confuse me.'

'I see that you are perfectly right, Aphranius,' said Pilate, 'and I

merely allowed myself to express a supposition.'

'Alas, it is erroneous, Procurator.'

`But what is it, then, what is it?' exclaimed the procurator, peering

into Aphranius’s face with greedy curiosity.

'I suppose it’s money again.'

'An excellent thought! But who could have offered him money at night,

outside the city, and for what?'

'Oh, no, Procurator, it’s not that. I have only one supposition, and if

it is wrong, I may not find any other explanations.' Aphranius leaned closer

to the procurator and finished in a whisper: 'Judas wanted to hide his money

in a secluded place known only to himself.'

'A very subtle explanation. That, apparently, is how things were. Now I

understand you: he was lured out not by others, but by his own purpose. Yes,

yes, that’s so.'

'So. Judas was mistrustful, he was hiding the money from others.' 'Yes,

in Gethsemane, you said… And why you intend to look for him precisely

there — that, I confess, I do not understand.'

'Oh, Procurator, that is the simplest thing of all. No one would hide

money on the roads, in open and empty places. Judas was neither on the road

to Hebron, nor on the road to Bethany. He had to be in a protected, secluded

place with trees. It’s as simple as that. And except for Gethsemane, there

are no such places near Yershalaim. He couldn’t have gone far.'

'You have utterly convinced me. And so, what are we to do now?'

'I will immediately start a search for the murderers who tracked Judas

out of the city, and I myself, meanwhile, as I have already reported to you,

will stand trial.'

" What for?'

'My guards lost him in the bazaar last evening, after he left Kaifa’s

palace. How it happened, I cannot comprehend. It has never happened before

in my life. He was put under surveillance just after our conversation. But

in the neighbourhood of the bazaar he doubled back somewhere, and made such

a strange loop that he escaped without a trace.'

'So. I declare to you that I do not consider it necessary to try you.

You did all you could, and no one in the world' - here the procurator smiled

— `could do more than you! Penalize the sleuths who lost Judas. But here,

too, I warn you, I would not want it to be anything of a severe sort. In the

last analysis, we did everything to take care of the blackguard!'

'Ah, yes! I forgot to ask,' the procurator rubbed his forehead, how did

they manage to foist the money on Kaifa?'

`You see, Procurator … that is not especially complicated. The

avengers came from behind Kaifa’s palace, where the lane is higher than the

yard. They threw the packet over the fence.'

" With a note?'

'Yes, exactly as you suspected, Procurator.'

'Yes, although…' Here Aphranius tore the seal off the packet and

showed its contents to Pilate.

`Good heavens, what are you doing, Aphranius, those must be temple

seals!'

" The procurator needn’t trouble himself with that question,' Aphranius

replied, closing the packet.

'Can it be that you have all the seals?' Pilate asked, laughing.

'It couldn’t be otherwise, Procurator,' Aphranius replied very sternly,

not laughing at all.

'I can imagine the effect at Kaifa’s!'

'Yes, Procurator, it caused great agitation. They summoned me

immediately.'

Even in the semi-darkness one could see how Pilate’s eyes flashed.

'That's interesting, interesting…'

'I venture to disagree, Procurator, it was not interesting. A most

boring and tiresome business. To my question whether anyone had been paid

money in Kaifa’s palace, I was told categorically that there had been

nothing of the sort.'

'Ah, yes? Well, so, if no one was paid, no one was paid. It will be

that much harder to find the killers.'

'Absolutely right, Procurator.'

`It suddenly occurs to me, Aphranius: might he not have killed

himself?"

'Oh, no, Procurator,' Aphranius replied, even leaning back in his chair

from astonishment, 'excuse me, but that is entirely unlikely!'

'Ah, everything is likely in this city. I’m ready to bet that in a very

short time rumours of it will spread all over the city.'

Here Aphranius again darted his look at the procurator, thought for a

moment, and replied:

'That may be, Procurator.'

The procurator was obviously still unable to part with this question of

the killing of the man from Kiriath, though everything was already clear,

and he said even with a sort of reverie:

`But I’d like to have seen how they killed him.' 'He was killed with

great art, Procurator,' Aphranius replied, glancing somewhat ironically at

the procurator.

'How do you know that?'

'Kindly pay attention to the bag, Procurator,' Aphranius replied. 'I

guarantee you that Judas’s blood gushed out in a stream. I’ve seen murdered

people in my time, Procurator.'

'So, of course, he won’t rise?'

'No, Procurator, he will rise,' replied Aphranius, smiling

philosophically, 'when the trumpet of the messiah they’re expecting here

sounds — over him. But before then he won’t rise.'

'Enough, Aphranius, the question is clear. Let’s go on to the burial.'

The executed men have been buried, Procurator.'

'Oh, Aphranius, it would be a crime to try you. You’re deserving of the

highest reward. How was it?'

Aphranius began to tell about it: while he himself was occupied with

Judas’s affair, a detachment of the secret guard, under the direction of his

assistant, arrived at the hill as evening came. One of the bodies was not

found on the hilltop. Pilate gave a start and said hoarsely:

'Ah, how did I not foresee it! …'

'No need to worry, Procurator,' said Aphranius, and he went on with his

narrative: `The bodies of Dysmas and Gestas, their eyes pecked out by

carrion birds, were taken up, and they immediately rushed in search of the

third body. It was discovered in a very short time. A certain man …'

'Matthew Levi,' said Pilate, not questioningly, but rather

affirmatively.

'Yes, Procurator… Matthew Levi was hiding in a cave on the northern

slope of Bald Skull, waiting for darkness. The naked body of Yeshua Ha-Nozri

was with him. When the guards entered the cave with a torch, Levi fell into

despair and wrath. He shouted about having committed no crime, and about

every man’s right by law to bury an executed criminal if he so desires.

Matthew Levi said he did not want to pan with the body. He was agitated,

cried out something incoherent, now begging, now threatening and cursing…'

'Did they have to arrest him?' Pilate asked glumly.

'No, Procurator, no,' Aphranius replied very soothingly, 'they managed

to quiet the impudent madman, explaining to him that the body would be

buried. Levi, having grasped what was being said to him, calmed down, but

announced that he would not leave and wished to take part in the burial. He

said he would not leave even if they started to kill him, and even offered

for that purpose a bread knife he had with him.'

'Was he chased away?' Pilate asked in a stifled voice.

'No, Procurator, no. My assistant allowed him to take part in the

burial.'

'Which of your assistants was in charge of it?' asked Pilate.

'Tolmai,' Aphranius answered and added in alarm: `Perhaps he made a

mistake?'

'Go on,' answered Pilate, `there was no mistake. Generally, I am

beginning to feel a bit at a loss, Aphranius, I am apparendy dealing with a

man who never makes mistakes. That man is you.'

`Matthew Levi was taken in the cart with the bodies of the executed

men, and in about two hours they reached a solitary ravine north of

Yershalaim. There the detachment, working in shifts, dug a deep hole within

an hour and buried all three executed men in it.'

'Naked?'

'No, Procurator, the detachment brought chitons with them for that

purpose. They put rings on the buried men’s fingers. Yeshua’s with one

notch, Dysmas’s with two, and Gestas’s with three. The hole has been covered

over and heaped with stones. The landmark is known to Tolmai.'

'Ah, if only I had foreseen it!' Pilate spoke, wincing. I needed to see

this Matthew Levi…'

'He is here, Procurator.'

Pilate, his eyes wide open, stared at Aphranius for some time, and then

said:

'I thank you for everything that has been done in this affair. I ask

you to send Tolmai to me tomorrow, and to tell him beforehand that I am

pleased with him. And you, Aphranius,' here the procurator took a seal ring

from the pouch of the belt lying on the table and gave it to me head of the

secret service, 'I beg you to accept this as a memento.'

Aphranius bowed and said:

'A great honour, Procurator.'

`I request that the detachment that performed the burial be given

rewards. The sleuths who let Judas slip — a reprimand. Have Matthew Levi

sent to me right now. I must have the details on Yeshua’s case.'

'Understood, Procurator,' Aphranius replied and began retreating and

bowing, while the procurator clapped his hands and shouted:

To me, here! A lamp to the colonnade!'

Aphranius was going out to the garden when lights began to flash in the

hands of servants behind Pilate’s back. Three lamps appeared on the table

before the procurator, and the moonlit night at once retreated to the

garden, as if Aphranius had led it away with him. In place of Aphranius, an

unknown man, small and skinny, stepped on to the balcony beside the gigantic

centurion. The latter, catching the procurator’s eye, withdrew to the garden

at once and there disappeared.

The procurator studied the newcomer with greedy and slightly frightened

eyes. So one looks at a man of whom one has heard a great deal, of whom one

has been thinking, and who finally appears.

The newcomer, a man of about forty, was black-haired, ragged, covered

with caked mud, and looked wolf-like from under his knitted brows. In short,

he was very unsightly, and rather resembled a city beggar, of whom there

were many hanging about on the porches of the temple or in the bazaars of

the noisy and dirty Lower City.

The silence continued for a long time, and was broken by the strange

behaviour of the man brought to Pilate. His countenance changed, he swayed,

and if he had not grasped the edge of the table with his dirty hand, he

would have fallen.

'What's wrong with you?' Pilate asked him.

'Nothing,' answered Matthew Levi, and he made a movement as if he were

swallowing something. His skinny, bare, grey neck swelled out and then

slackened again.

'What's wrong, answer me,' Pilate repeated.

'I'm tired,' Levi answered and looked sullenly at the floor.

'Sit down,' said Pilate, pointing to the armchair.

Levi looked at the procurator mistrustfully, moved towards the

armchair, gave a timorous sidelong glance at the gilded armrests, and sat

down not in the chair but beside it on the floor.

'Explain to me, why did you not sit in the chair?' asked Pilate.

'I'm dirty, I’d soil it,' said Levi, looking at the ground.

'You'll presently be given something to eat.'

'I don’t want to eat,' answered Levi.

'Why lie?' Pilate asked quietly. 'You haven’t eaten for the whole day,

and maybe even longer. Very well, don’t eat. I’ve summoned you so that you

could show me the knife you had with you.'

`The soldiers took it from me when they brought me here,' Levi replied

and added sullenly: 'You must give it back to me, I have to return it to its

owner, I stole it.'

'What for?'

To cut the ropes,' answered Levi.

'Mark!' cried the procurator, and the centurion stepped in under the

columns. 'Give me his knife.'

The centurion took a dirty bread knife from one of the two cases on his

belt, handed it to the procurator, and withdrew.

'Who did you take the knife from?'

'From the bakery by the Hebron gate, just as you enter the city, on the

left.'

Pilate looked at the broad blade, for some reason tried the sharpness

of the edge with his finger, and said:

'Concerning the knife you needn’t worry, the knife will be returned to

the shop. But now I want a second thing — show me the charta you carry with

you, on which Yeshua’s words are written down.'

Levi looked at Pilate with hatred and smiled such an inimical smile

that his face became completely ugly.

'You want to take away the last thing?' he asked.

'I didn’t say «give me» ,' answered Pilate, 'I said «show me» .'

Levi fumbled in his bosom and produced a parchment scroll. Pilate took

it, unrolled it, spread it out between the lights, and, squinting, began to

study the barely legible ink marks. It was difficult to understand these

crabbed lines, and Pilate kept wincing and leaning right to the parchment,

running his finger over the lines. He did manage to make out that the

writing represented an incoherent chain of certain utterances, certain

dates, household records, and poetic fragments. Some of it Pilate could

read: '…there is no death … yesterday we ate sweet spring baccuroth

…'[7]

Grimacing with the effort, Pilate squinted as he read: '… we shall

see the pure river of the water of life [8] … mankind shall look at the

sun through transparent crystal…' Here Pilate gave a start. In the last

lines of the parchment he made out the words: '… greater vice …

cowardice…'

Pilate rolled up the parchment and with an abrupt movement handed it to

Levi.

Take it,' he said and, after a pause, added: `You're a bookish man, I

see, and there’s no need for you to go around alone, in beggar’s clothing,

without shelter. I have a big library in Caesarea, I am very rich and want

to take you to work for me. You will sort out and look after the papyri, you

will be fed and clothed.'

Levi stood up and replied:

'No, I don’t want to.'

'Why?' the procurator asked, his face darkening. `Am I disagreeable to

you? … Are you afraid of me?'

The same bad smile distorted Levi’s face, and he said:

'No, because you’ll be afraid of me. It won’t be very easy for you to

look me in the face now that you’ve killed him.'

'Quiet,' replied Pilate. Take some money.'

Levi shook his head negatively, and the procurator went on:

'I know you consider yourself a disciple of Yeshua, but I can tell you

that you learned nothing of what he taught you. For if you had, you would

certainly take something from me. Bear in mind that before he died he said

he did not blame anyone.' Pilate raised a finger significantly, Pilate’s

face was twitching. 'And he himself would surely have taken something. You

are cruel, and he was not cruel. Where will you go?'

Levi suddenly came up to the table, leaned both hands on it, and,

gazing at the procurator with burning eyes, whispered to him:

'Know, Hegemon, that I am going to kill a man in Yershalaim. I wanted

to tell you that, so you’d know there will be more blood.'

'I, too, know there will be more of it,' replied Pilate, `you haven’t

surprised me with your words. You want, of course, to kill me?'

`You I won’t manage to kill,' replied Levi, baring his teeth and

smiling, 'I'm not such a foolish man as to count on that. But I’ll kill

Judas of Kiriath, I’ll devote the rest of my life to it.'

Here pleasure showed in the procurator’s eyes, and beckoning Matthew

Levi to come closer, he said:

'You won’t manage to do it, don’t trouble yourself. Judas has already

been killed this night.'

Levi sprang away from the table, looking wildly around, and cried out:

'Who did it?'

`Don't be jealous,' Pilate answered, his teeth bared, and rubbed his

hands, 'I'm afraid he had other admirers besides you.'

'Who did it?' Levi repeated in a whisper.

Pilate answered him:

'I did it.'

Levi opened his mouth and stared at the procurator, who said quietly:

`It is, of course, not much to have done, but all the same I did it.'

And he added: 'Well, and now will you take something?'

Levi considered, relented, and finally said:

'Have them give me a piece of clean parchment.'

An hour went by. Levi was not in the palace. Now the silence of the

dawn was broken only by the quiet noise of the sentries' footsteps in the

garden. The moon was quickly losing its colour, one could see at the other

edge of the sky the whitish dot of the morning star. The lamps had gone out

long, long ago. The procurator lay on the couch. Putting his hand under his

cheek, he slept and breathed soundlessly. Beside him slept Banga.

Thus was the dawn of the fifteenth day of Nisan met by the fifth

procurator of Judea, Pontius Pilate.

CHAPTER 27. The End of Apartment No.50

When Margarita came to the last words of the chapter — '… Thus was

the dawn of the fifteenth day of Nisan met by the fifth procurator of Judea,

Pontius Pilate' - it was morning.

Sparrows could be heard in the branches of the willows and lindens in

the little garden, conducting a merry, excited morning conversation.

Margarita got up from the armchair, stretched, and only then felt how

broken her body was and how much she wanted to sleep. It is interesting to

note that Margarita’s soul was in perfect order. Her thoughts were not

scattered, she was quite unshaken by having spent the night supernaturally.

She was not troubled by memories of having been at Satan’s ball, or

that by some miracle the master had been returned to her, that the novel had

risen from the ashes, that everything was back in place in the basement in

the lane, from which the snitcher Aloisy Mogarych had been expelled. In

short, acquaintance with Woland had caused her no psychic damage. Everything

was as if it ought to have been so.

She went to the next room, convinced herself that the master was

soundly and peacefully asleep, turned off the unnecessary table lamp, and

stretched out by the opposite wall on a little couch covered with an old,

torn sheet. A minute later she was asleep, and that morning she had no

dreams. The basement rooms were silent, the builder’s whole little house was

silent, and it was quiet in the solitary lane.

But just then, that is, at dawn on Saturday, an entire floor of a

certain Moscow institution was not asleep, and its windows, looking out on a

big asphalt-paved square which special machines, driving around slowly and

droning, were cleaning with brushes, shone with their full brightness,

cutting through the light of the rising sun.

The whole floor was occupied with the investigation of the Woland case,

and the lights had burned all night in dozens of offices.

Essentially speaking, the matter had already become clear on the

previous day, Friday, when the Variety had had to be closed, owing to the

disappearance of its administration and all sorts of outrages which had

taken place during the notorious s ance of black magic the day before. But

the thing was that more and more new material kept arriving all the time and

incessantly on the sleepless floor.

Now the investigators of this strange case, which smacked of obvious

devilry, with an admixture of some hypnotic tricks and distinct criminality,

had to shape into one lump all the many-sided and tangled events that had

taken place in various parts of Moscow.

The first to visit the sleepless, electrically lit-up floor was Arkady

Apollonovich Sempleyarov, chairman of the Acoustics Commission.

After dinner on Friday, in his apartment located in a house by the

Kamenny Bridge, the telephone rang and a male voice asked for Arkady

Apollonovich. Arkady Apollonovich’s wife, who picked up the phone, replied

sullenly that Arkady Apollonovich was unwell, had retired for the night, and

could not come to the phone. However, Arkady Apollonovich came to the phone

all the same. To the question of where Arkady Apollonovich was being called

from, the voice in the telephone had said very briefly where it was from.

'This second … at once … this minute …' babbled the ordinarily

very haughty wife of the chairman of the Acoustics Commission, and she flew

to the bedroom like an arrow to rouse Arkady Apollonovich from his bed,

where he lay experiencing the torments of hell at the recollection of

yesterday’s s ance and the night’s scandal, followed by the expulsion of his

Saratov niece from the apartment.

Not in a second, true, yet not in a minute either, but in a quarter of

a minute, Arkady Apollonovich, with one slipper on his left foot, in nothing

but his underwear, was already at the phone, babbling into it:

'Yes, it’s me … I’m listening, I’m listening …'

His wife, forgetting for these moments all the loathsome crimes against

fidelity in which the unfortunate Arkady Apollonovich had been exposed, kept

sticking herself out the door to the corridor with a frightened face, poking

a slipper at the air and whispering:

'Put the slipper on, the slipper … you’ll catch cold …' At which

Arkady Apollonovich, waving his wife away with his bare foot and making

savage eyes at her, muttered into the telephone:

'Yes, yes, yes, surely … I understand … I’ll leave at once…'

Arkady Apollonovich spent the whole evening on that same floor where

the investigation was being conducted.

It was a difficult conversation, a most unpleasant conversation, for he

had to tell with complete sincerity not only about this obnoxious s ance and

the fight in the box, but along with that — as was indeed necessary — also

about Militsa Andreevna Pokobatko from Yelokhovskaya Street, and about the

Saratov niece, and about much else, the telling of which caused Arkady

Apollonovich inexpressible torments.

Needless to say, the testimony of Arkady Apollonovich, an intelligent

and cultivated man, who had been a witness to the outrageous s ance, a

sensible and qualified witness, who gave an excellent description of the

mysterious masked magician himself and of his two scoundrelly assistants, a

witness who remembered perfectly well that the magician’s name was indeed

Woland, advanced the investigation considerably. And the juxtaposition of

Arkady Apollonovich’s testimony with the testimony of others — among whom

were some ladies who had suffered after the s ance (the one in violet

underwear who had shocked Rimsky and, alas, many others), and the messenger

Karpov, who had been sent to apartment no.50 on Sadovaya Street — at once

essentially established the place where the culprit in all these adventures

was to be sought.

Apartment no.50 was visited, and not just once, and not only was it

looked over with extreme thoroughness, but the walls were also tapped and

the fireplace flues checked, in search of hiding places. However, none of

these measures yielded any results, and no one was discovered in the

apartment during any of these visits, though it was perfectly clear that

there was someone in the apartment, despite the fact that all persons who in

one way or another were supposed to be in charge of foreign artistes coming

to Moscow decidedly and categorically insisted that there was not and could

not be any black magician Woland in Moscow.

He had decidedly not registered anywhere on arrival, had not shown

anyone his passport or other papers, contracts, or agreements, and no one

had heard anything about him! Kitaitsev, head of the programme department of

the Spectacles Commission, swore to God that the vanished Styopa Likhodeev

had never sent him any performance programme of any Woland for approval and

had never telephoned him about the arrival of such a Woland. So that he,

Kitaitsev, utterly failed to see and understand how Styopa could have

allowed such a s ance in the Variety. And when told that Arkady Apollonovich

had seen this magician at the seance with his own eyes, Kitaitsev only

spread his arms and raised his eyes to heaven. And from Kitaitsev’s eyes

alone one could see and say confidently that he was as pure as crystal.

That same Prokhor Petrovich, chairman of the main Spectacles

Commission…

Incidentally, he returned to his suit immediately after the police came

into his office, to the ecstatic joy of Anna Richardovna and the great

perplexity of the needlessly troubled police.

Also, incidentally, having returned to his place, into his grey striped

suit, Prokhor Petrovich fully approved of all the resolutions the suit had

written during his short-term absence.

… So, then, this same Prokhor Petrovich knew decidedly nothing about

any Woland.

Whether you will or no, something preposterous was coming out:

thousands of spectators, the whole staff of the Variety, and finally

Sempleyarov, Arkady Apollonovich, a most educated man, had seen this

magician, as well as his thrice-cursed assistants, and yet it was absolutely

impossible to find him anywhere. What was it, may I ask, had he fallen

through the ground right after his disgusting s ance, or, as some affirm,

had he not come to Moscow at all? But if the first is allowed, then

undoubtedly, in falling through, he had taken along the entire top

administration of the Variety, and if the second, then would it not mean

that the administration of the luckless theatre itself, after first

committing some vileness (only recall the broken window in the study and the

behaviour of Ace of Diamonds!), had disappeared from Moscow without a trace?

We must do justice to the one who headed the investigation. The

vanished Rimsky was found with amazing speed. One had only to put together

the behaviour of Ace of Diamonds at the cab stand by the movie theatre with

certain given times, such as when the seance ended, and precisely when

Rimsky could have disappeared, and then immediately send a telegram to

Leningrad. An hour later (towards evening on Friday) came the reply that

Rimsky had been discovered in number four-twelve on the fourth floor of the

Hotel Astoria, next to the room in which the repertory manager of one of the

Moscow theatres, then on tour in Leningrad, was staying — that same room

which, as is known, had gilded grey-blue furniture and a wonderful

bathroom.'

Discovered hiding in the wardrobe of number four-twelve of the Astoria,

Rimsky was questioned right there in Leningrad. After which a telegram came

to Moscow reporting that findirector Rimsky was in an unanswerable state,

that he could not or did not wish to give sensible replies to questions and

begged only to be hidden in a bulletproof room and provided with an armed

guard.

A telegram from Moscow ordered that Rimsky be delivered to Moscow under

guard, as a result of which Rimsky departed Friday evening, under said

guard, on the evening train.

Towards evening on that same Friday, Likhodeev’s trail was also found.

Telegrams of inquiry about Likhodeev were sent to all cities, and from Yalta

came the reply that Likhodeev had been in Yalta but had left on a plane for

Moscow.

The only one whose trail they failed to pick up was Varenukha. The

famous theatre administrator known to decidedly all of Moscow had vanished

into thin air.

In the meantime, there was some bother with things happening in other

parts of Moscow, outside the Variety Theatre. It was necessary to explain

the extraordinary case of the staff all singing `Glorious Sea'

(incidentally: Professor Stravinsky managed to put them right within two

hours, by means of some subcutaneous injections), of persons presenting

other persons or institutions with devil knows what in the guise of money,

and also of persons who had suffered from such presentations.

As goes without saying, the most unpleasant, the most scandalous and

insoluble of all these cases was the case of the theft of the head of the

deceased writer Berlioz right from the coffin in the hall of Griboedov’s,

carried out in broad daylight.

Twelve men conducted the investigation, gathering as on a

knitting-needle the accursed stitches of this complicated case scattered all

over Moscow.

One of the investigators arrived at Professor Stravinsky’s clinic and

first of all asked to be shown a list of the persons who had checked in to

the clinic over the past three days. Thus they discovered Nikanor Ivanovich

Bosoy and the unfortunate master of ceremonies whose head had been torn off.

However, little attention was paid to them. By now it was easy to

establish that these two had fallen victim to the same gang, headed by that

mysterious magician. But to Ivan Nikolaevich Homeless the investigator paid

great attention.

The door of Ivanushka’s room no.117 opened towards evening on Friday,

and into the room came a young, round-faced, calm and mild-mannered man, who

looked quite unlike an investigator and yet was one of the best in Moscow.

He saw lying on the bed a pale and pinched young man, in whose eyes one

could read a lack of interest in what went on around him, whose eyes looked

now somewhere into the distance, over his surroundings, now into the young

man himself. The investigator gently introduced himself and said he had

stopped at Ivan Nikolaevich’s to talk over the events at the Patriarch’s

Ponds two days ago.

Oh, how triumphant Ivan would have been if the investigator had come to

him earlier — say, on Wednesday night, when Ivan had striven so violently

and passionately to make his story about the Patriarch’s Ponds heard! Now

his dream of helping to catch the consultant had come true, there was no

longer any need to run after anyone, they had come to him on their own,

precisely to hear his story about what had happened on Wednesday evening.

But, alas, Ivanushka had changed completely in the time that had passed

since the moment of Berlioz’s death: he was ready to answer all of the

investigator’s questions willingly and politely, but indifference could be

sensed both in Ivan’s eyes and in his intonation. The poet was no longer

concerned with Berlioz’s fate.

Before the investigator’s arrival, Ivanushka lay dozing, and certain

visions passed before him. Thus, he saw a city, strange, incomprehensible,

non-existent, with marble masses, eroded colonnades, roofs gleaming in the

sun, with the black, gloomy and merciless Antonia Tower, with the palace on

the western hill sunk almost up to its rooftops in the tropical greenery of

the garden, with bronze statues blazing in the sunset above this greenery,

and he saw armour-clad Roman centuries moving along under the walls of the

ancient city.

As he dozed, there appeared before Ivan a man, motionless in an

armchair, clean-shaven, with a harried yellow face, a man in a white mantle

with red lining, gazing hatefully into the luxurious and alien garden. Ivan

also saw a treeless yellow hill with empty cross-barred posts. And what had

happened at the Patriarch’s Ponds no longer interested the poet Ivan

Homeless.

Tell me, Ivan Nikolaevich, how far were you from the turnstile yourself

when Berlioz slipped under the tram-car?'

A barely noticeable, indifferent smile touched Ivan’s lips for some

reason, and he replied:

'I was far away.'

'And the checkered one was right by the turnstile?'

'No, he was sitting on a little bench nearby.'

`You clearly recall that he did not go up to the turnstile at the

moment when Berlioz fell?'

'I recall. He didn’t go up to it. He sat sprawled on the bench.'

These questions were the investigator’s last. After them he got up,

gave Ivanushka his hand, wished him a speedy recovery, and expressed the

hope that he would soon be reading his poetry again.

'No,' Ivan quietly replied, I won’t write any more poetry.'

The investigator smiled politely, allowed himself to express his

certainty that, while the poet was presently in a state of some depression,

it would soon pass.

'No,' Ivan responded, looking not at the investigator but into the

distance, at the fading sky, 'it will never pass. The poems I used to write

were bad poems, and now I understand it.'

The investigator left Ivanushka, having obtained some quite important

material. Following the thread of events from the end to the beginning, they

finally succeeded in reaching the source from which all the events had come.

The investigator had no doubt that these events began with the murder

at the Patriarch’s Ponds. Of course, neither Ivanushka nor this checkered

one had pushed the unfortunate chairman of Massolit under the tram-car;

physically, so to speak, no one had contributed to his failing under the

wheels. But the investigator was convinced that Berlioz had thrown himself

under the tram-car (or tumbled under it) while hypnotized.

Yes, there was already a lot of material, and it was known who had to

be caught and where. But the thing was that it proved in no way possible to

catch anyone. We must repeat, there undoubtedly was someone in the

thrice-cursed apartment no.

50. Occasionally the apartment answered telephone

calls, now in a rattling, now in a nasal voice, occasionally one of its

windows was opened, what’s more, the sounds of a gramophone came from it.

And yet each time it was visited, decidedly no one was found there. And it

had already been visited more than once and at different times of day. And

not only that, but they had gone through it with a net, checking every

corner. The apartment had long been under suspicion. Guards were placed not

just at the way to the courtyard through the gates, but at the back entrance

as well. Not only that, but guards were placed on the roof by the chimneys.

Yes, apartment no.50 was acting up, and it was impossible to do anything

about it.

So the thing dragged on until midnight on Friday, when Baron Meigel,

dressed in evening clothes and patent-leather shoes, solemnly proceeded into

apartment no.50 in the quality of a guest. One could hear the baron being

let in to the apartment. Exactly ten minutes later, without any ringing of

bells, the apartment was visited, yet not only were the hosts not found in

it, but, which was something quite bizarre, no signs of Baron Meigel were

found in it either.

And so, as was said, the thing dragged on in this fashion until dawn on

Saturday. Here new and very interesting data were added. A six-place

passenger plane, coming from the Crimea, landed at the Moscow airport. Among

the other passengers, one strange passenger got out of it. This was a young

citizen, wildly overgrown with stubble, unwashed for three days, with

inflamed and frightened eyes, carrying no luggage and dressed somewhat

whimsically. The citizen was wearing a tall sheepskin hat, a Georgian felt

cape over a nightshirt, and new, just-purchased, blue leather bedroom

slippers. As soon as he separated from the ladder by which they descended

from the plane, he was approached. This citizen had been expected, and in a

little while the unforgettable director of the Variety, Stepan Bogdanovich

Likhodeev, was standing before the investigators. He threw in some new data.

It now became clear that Woland had penetrated the Variety in the guise of

an artiste, having hypnotized Styopa Likhodeev, and had then contrived to

fling this same Styopa out of Moscow and God knows how many miles away. The

material was thus augmented, yet that did not make things easier, but

perhaps even a bit harder, because it was becoming obvious that to lay hold

of a person who could perform such stunts as the one of which Stepan

Bogdanovich had been the victim would not be so easy. Incidentally,

Likhodeev, at his own request, was confined in a secure cell, and next

before the investigators stood Varenukha, just arrested in his own

apartment, to which he had returned after a blank disappearance of almost

two days.

Despite the promise he had given Azazello not to lie any more, the

administrator began precisely with a lie. Though, by the way, he cannot be

judged very harshly for it. Azazello had forbidden him to lie and be rude on

the telephone, but in the present case the administrator spoke without the

assistance of this apparatus. His eyes wandering, Ivan Savelyevich declared

that on Thursday afternoon he had got drunk in his office at the Variety,

all by himself, after which he went somewhere, but where he did not

remember, drank starka [2] somewhere, but where he did not remember, lay

about somewhere under a fence, but where he again did not remember. Only

after the administrator was told that with his behaviour, stupid and

senseless, he was hindering the investigation of an important case and would

of course have to answer for it, did Varenukha burst into sobs and whisper

in a trembling voice, looking around him, that he had lied solely out of

fear, apprehensive of the revenge of Woland’s gang, into whose hands he had

already fallen, and that he begged, implored and yearned to be locked up in

a bullet-proof cell.

'Pah, the devil! Really, them and their bulletproof cells!' grumbled

one of the investigators.

`They've been badly frightened by those scoundrels,' said the

investigator who had visited Ivanushka.

They calmed Varenukha down the best they could, said they would protect

him without any cell, and here it was learned that he had not drunk any

starka under a fence, and that he had been beaten by two, one red-haired and

with a fang, the other fat…

'Ah, resembling a cat?'

'Yes, yes, yes,' whispered the administrator, sinking with fear and

looking around him every second, coming out with further details of how he

had existed for some two days in apartment no.50 in the quality of a tip-off

vampire, who had all but caused the death of the findirector Rimsky…

Just then Rimsky, brought on the Leningrad train, was being led in.

However, this mentally disturbed, grey-haired old man, trembling with

fear, in whom it was very difficult to recognize the former findirector,

would not tell the truth for anything, and proved to be very stubborn in

this respect. Rimsky insisted that he had not seen any Hella in his office

window at night, nor any Varenukha, but had simply felt bad and in a state

of unconsciousness had left for Leningrad. Needless to say, the ailing

findirector concluded his testimony with a request that he be confined to a

bulletproof cell.

Annushka was arrested just as she made an attempt to hand a ten-dollar

bill to the cashier of a department store on the Arbat. Annushka’s story

about people flying out the window of the house on Sadovaya and about the

little horseshoe which Annushka, in her own words, had picked up in order to

present it to the police, was listened to attentively.

The horseshoe was really made of gold and diamonds?' Annushka was

asked.

'As if I don’t know diamonds,' replied Annushka.

'But he gave you ten-rouble bills, you say?'

'As if I don’t know ten-rouble bills,' replied Annushka.

'Well, and when did they turn into dollars?'

'I don’t know anything about any dollars, I never saw any dollars!'

Annushka replied shrilly. 'I'm in my rights! I got recompensed, I was buying

cloth with it,' and she went off into some balderdash about not being

answerable for the house management that allowed unclean powers on to the

fifth floor, making life unbearable.

Here the investigator waved at Annushka with his pen, because everyone

was properly sick of her, and wrote a pass for her to get out on a green

slip of paper, after which, to everyone’s pleasure, Annushka disappeared

from the building.

Then there followed one after another a whole series of people, Nikolai

Ivanovich among them, just arrested owing solely to the foolishness of his

jealous wife, who towards morning had informed the police that her husband

had vanished. Nikolai Ivanovich did not surprise the investigators very much

when he laid on the table the clownish certificate of his having spent the

time at Satan’s ball. In his stories of how he had carried Margarita

Nikolaevna’s naked housekeeper on his back through the air, somewhere to

hell and beyond, for a swim in a river, and of the preceding appearance of

the bare Margarita Nikolaevna in the window, Nikolai Ivanovich departed

somewhat from the truth. Thus, for instance, he did not consider it

necessary to mention that he had arrived in the bedroom with the discarded

shift in his hands, or that he had called Natasha 'Venus'. From his words it

looked as if Natasha had flown out the window, got astride him, and dragged

him away from Moscow …

'Obedient to constraint, I was compelled to submit,' Nikolai Ivanovich

said, and finished his tale with a request that not a word of it be told to

his wife. Which was promised him.

The testimony of Nikolai Ivanovich provided an opportunity for

establishing that Margarita Nikolaevna as well as her housekeeper Natasha

had vanished without a trace. Measures were taken to find them.

Thus every second of Saturday morning was marked by the unrelenting

investigation. In the city during that time, completely impossible rumours

emerged and floated about, in which a tiny portion of truth was embellished

with the most luxuriant lies. It was said that there had been a seance at

the Variety after which all two thousand spectators ran out to the street in

their birthday suits, that a press for making counterfeit money of a magic

sort had been nabbed on Sadovaya Street, that some gang had kidnapped five

managers from the entertainment sector, but the police had immediately found

them all, and many other things that one does not even wish to repeat.

Meanwhile it was getting on towards dinner time, and then, in the place

where the investigation was being conducted, the telephone rang. From

Sadovaya came a report that the accursed apartment was again showing signs

of life. It was said that its windows had been opened from inside, that

sounds of a piano and singing were coming from it, and that a black cat had

been seen in a window, sitting on the sill and basking in the sun.

At around four o’clock on that hot day, a big company of men in

civilian clothes got out of three cars a short distance from no.502-bis on

Sadovaya Street. Here the big group divided into two small ones, the first

going under the gateway of the house and across the courtyard directly to

the sixth entrance, while the second opened the normally boarded-up little

door leading to the back entrance, and both started up separate stairways to

apartment no.

50.

Just then Koroviev and Azazello — Koroviev in his usual outfit and not

the festive tailcoat — were sitting in the dining room of the apartment

finishing breakfast. Woland, as was his wont, was in the bedroom, and where

the cat was nobody knew. But judging by the clatter of dishes coming from

the kitchen, it could be supposed that Behemoth was precisely there, playing

the fool, as was his wont.

'And what are those footsteps on the stairs?' asked Koroviev, toying

with the little spoon in his cup of black coffee.

`That's them coming to arrest us,' Azazello replied and drank off a

glass of cognac.

'Ahh … well, well…' Koroviev replied to that.

The ones going up the front stairway were already on the third-floor

landing. There a couple of plumbers were pottering over the harmonica of the

steam heating. The newcomers exchanged significant glances with the

plumbers.

'They're all at home,' whispered one of the plumbers, tapping a pipe

with his hammer.

Then the one walking at the head openly took a black Mauser from under

his coat, and another beside him took out the skeleton keys. Generally,

those going to apartment no.50 were properly equipped. Two of them had fine,

easily unfolded silk nets in their pockets. Another of them had a lasso,

another had gauze masks and ampoules of chloroform.

In a second the front door to apartment no.50 was open and all the

visitors were in the front hall, while the slamming of the door in the

kitchen at the same moment indicated the timely arrival of the second group

from the back stairs.

This time there was, if not complete, at least some sort of success.

The men instantly dispersed through all the rooms and found no one

anywhere, but instead on the table of the dining room they discovered the

remains of an apparently just-abandoned breakfast, and in the living room,

on the mantelpiece, beside a crystal pitcher, sat an enormous black cat. He

was holding a primus in his paws.

Those who entered the living room contemplated this cat for quite a

long time in total silence.

'Hm, yes … that’s quite something …' one of the men whispered.

'Ain't misbehaving, ain’t bothering anybody, just reparating my

primus,' said the cat with an unfriendly scowl, `and I also consider it my

duty to warn you that the cat is an ancient and inviolable animal.'

'Exceptionally neat job,' whispered one of the men, and another said

loudly and distinctly:

" Well, come right in, you inviolable, ventriloquous cat!' The net

unfolded and soared upwards, but the man who cast it, to everyone’s utter

astonishment, missed and only caught the pitcher, which straight away

smashed ringingly.

'You lose!' bawled the cat. 'Hurrah!' and here, setting the primus

aside, he snatched a Browning from behind his back. In a trice he aimed it

at the man standing closest, but before the cat had time to shoot, fire

blazed in the man’s hand, and at the blast of the Mauser the cat plopped

head first from the mantelpiece on to the floor, dropping the Browning and

letting go of the primus.

'It's all over,' the cat said in a weak voice, sprawled languidly in a

pool of blood, 'step back from me for a second, let me say farewell to the

earth. Oh, my friend Azazello,' moaned the cat, bleeding profusely, 'where

are you?' The cat rolled his fading eyes in the direction of the dining-room

door. `You did not come to my aid in the moment of unequal battle, you

abandoned poor Behemoth, exchanging him for a glass of — admittedly very

good — cognac! Well, so, let my death be on your conscience, and I bequeath

you my Browning…'

The net, the net, the net …' was anxiously whispered around the cat.

But the net, devil knows why, got caught in someone’s pocket and refused to

come out.

The only thing that can save a mortally wounded cat,' said the cat, 'is

a swig of benzene.' And taking advantage of the confusion, he bent to the

round opening in the primus and had a good drink of benzene. The blood at

once stopped flowing from under his left front leg. The cat jumped up, alive

and cheerful, seized the primus under his paw, shot back on to the

mantelpiece with it, and from there, shredding the wallpaper, climbed the

wall and some two seconds later was high above the visitors and sitting on a

metal curtain rod.

— Hands instantly clutched the curtain and tore it off together with

the rod, causing sunlight to flood the shaded room. But neither the

fraudulently recovered cat nor the primus fell down. The cat, without

parting with his primus, managed to shoot through the air and land on the

chandelier hanging in the middle of the room.

'A stepladder!' came from below.

'I challenge you to a duel!' bawled the cat, sailing over their heads

on the swinging chandelier, and the Browning was again in his paw, and the

primus was lodged among the branches of the chandelier. The cat took aim

and, flying like a pendulum over the heads of the visitors, opened fire on

them. The din shook the apartment. Crystal shivers poured down from the

chandelier, the mantelpiece mirror was cracked into stars, plaster dust

flew, spent cartridges bounced over the floor, window-panes shattered,

benzene spouted from the bullet-pierced primus. Now there was no question of

taking the cat alive, and the visitors fiercely and accurately returned his

fire from the Mausers, aiming at his head, stomach, chest and back. The

shooting caused panic on the asphalt courtyard.

But this shooting did not last long and began to die down of itself.

The thing was that it caused no harm either to the cat or to the

visitors. Not only was no one killed, but no one was even wounded. Everyone,

including the cat, remained totally unharmed. One of the visitors, to verify

it definitively, sent some five bullets at the confounded animal’s head,

while the cat smartly responded with a full clip, but it was the same — no

effect was produced on anybody. The cat swayed on the chandelier, which

swung less and less, blowing into the muzzle of his Browning and spitting on

his paw for some reason. The faces of those standing silently below acquired

an expression of utter bewilderment. This was the only case, or one of the

only cases, when shooting proved to be entirely inefficacious. One might

allow, of course, that the cat’s Browning was some sort of toy, but one

could by no means say the same of the visitors' Mausers. The cat’s very

first wound — there obviously could not be the slightest doubt of it — was

nothing but a trick and a swinish sham, as was the drinking of the benzene.

One more attempt was made to get hold of the cat. The lasso was thrown,

it caught on one of the candles, the chandelier fell down. The crash seemed

to shake the whole structure of the house, but it was no use. Those present

were showered with splinters, and the cat flew through the air over them and

settled high under the ceiling on the upper part of the mantelpiece mirror’s

gilded frame. He had no intention of escaping anywhere, but, on the

contrary, while sitting in relative safety, even started another speech:

`I utterly fail to comprehend,' he held forth from on high, 'the

reasons for such harsh treatment of me…'

And here at its very beginning this speech was interrupted by a heavy,

low voice coming from no one knew where:

" What’s going on in the apartment? They prevent me from working…'

Another voice, unpleasant and nasal, responded:

'Well, it’s Behemoth, of course, devil take him!'

A third, rattling voice said:

'Messire! It’s Saturday. The sun is setting. Time to go.'

'Excuse me, I can’t talk any more,' the cat said from the mirror, 'time

to go.' He hurled his Browning and knocked out both panes in the window.

Then he splashed down some benzene, and this benzene caught fire by itself,

throwing a wave of flame up to the very ceiling. Things caught fire somehow

unusually quickly and violently, as does not happen even with benzene. The

wallpaper at once began to smoke, the torn-down curtain started burning on

the floor, and the frames of the broken windows began to smoulder. The cat

crouched, miaowed, shot from the mirror to the window-sill, and disappeared

through it together with his primus.

Shots rang out outside. A man sitting on the iron fire-escape at the

level of the jeweller’s wife’s windows fired at the cat as he flew from one

window-sill to another, making for the corner drainpipe of the house which,

as has been said, was built in the form of a 'U'. By way of this pipe, the

cat climbed up to the roof. There, unfortunately also without any result, he

was shot at by the sentries guarding the chimneys, and the cat cleared off

into the setting sun that was flooding the city.

Just then in the apartment the parquet blazed up under the visitors'

feet, and in that fire, on the same spot where the cat had sprawled with his

sham wound, there appeared, growing more and more dense, the corpse of the

former Baron Meigel with upthrust chin and glassy eyes. To get him out was

no longer possible.

Leaping over the burning squares of parquet, slapping themselves on

their smoking chests and shoulders, those who were in the living room

retreated to the study and front hall. Those who were in the dining room and

bedroom ran out through the corridor. Those in the kitchen also came running

and rushed into the front hall. The living room was already filled with fire

and smoke. Someone managed, in flight, to dial the number of the fire

department and shout briefly into the receiver:

'Sadovaya, three-oh-two-bis! …'

To stay longer was impossible. Flames gushed out into the front hall.

Breathing became difficult.

As soon as the first little spurts of smoke pushed through the broken

windows of the enchanted apartment, desperate human cries arose in the

courtyard:

'Fire! Fire! We’re burning!'

In various apartments of the house, people began shouting into

telephones:

'Sadovaya! Sadovaya, three-oh-two-bis!'

Just then, as the heart-quailing bells were heard on Sadovaya, ringing

from long red engines racing quickly from all parts of the city, the people

rushing about the yard saw how, along with the smoke, there flew out of the

fifth-storey window three dark, apparently male silhouettes and one

silhouette of a naked woman.

CHAPTER 28. The Last Adventures of Koroviev and Behemoth

Whether these silhouettes were there, or were only imagined by the

fear-struck tenants of the ill-fated house on Sadovaya, is, of course,

impossible to say precisely. If they were there, where they set out for is

also known to no one. Nor can we say where they separated, but we do know

that approximately a quarter of an hour after the fire started on Sadovaya,

there appeared by the mirrored doors of a currency store' on the Smolensky

market-place a long citizen in a checkered suit, and with him a big black

cat.

Deftly slithering between the passers-by, — the citizen opened the

outer door of the shop. But here a small, bony and extremely ill-disposed

doorman barred his way and said irritably:

'No cats allowed!'

'I beg your pardon,' rattled the long one, putting his gnarled hand to

his ear as if he were hard of hearing, 'no cats, you say? And where do you

see any cats?'

The doorman goggled his eyes, and well he might: there was no cat at

the citizen’s feet now, but instead, from behind his shoulder, a fat fellow

in a tattered cap, whose mug indeed somewhat resembled a cat’s, stuck out,

straining to get into the store. There was a primus in the fat fellow’s

hands.

The misanthropic doorman for some reason disliked this pair of

customers.

`We only accept currency,' he croaked, gazing vexedly from under his

shaggy, as if moth-eaten, grizzled eyebrows.

`My dear man,' rattled the long one, flashing his eye through the

broken pince-nez, 'how do you know I don’t have any? Are you judging by my

clothes? Never do so, my most precious custodian! You may make a mistake,

and a big one at that. At least read the story of the famous caliph Harun

al-Rashid [2] over again. But in the present case, casting that story aside

temporarily, I want to tell you that I am going to make a complaint about

you to the manager and tell him such tales about you that you may have to

surrender your post between the shining mirrored doors.'

'Maybe I’ve got a whole primus full of currency,' the cat-like fat

fellow, who was simply shoving his way into the store, vehemently butted

into the conversation.

Behind them the public was already pushing and getting angry. Looking

at the prodigious pair with hatred and suspicion, the doorman stepped aside,

and our acquaintances, Koroviev and Behemoth, found themselves in the store.

Here they first of all looked around, and then, in a ringing voice

heard decidedly in every corner, Koroviev announced:

'A wonderful store! A very, very fine store!'

The public turned away from the counters and for some reason looked at

the speaker in amazement, though he had all grounds for praising the store.

Hundreds of bolts of cotton in the richest assortment of colours could

be seen in the pigeonholes of the shelves. Next to them were piled calicoes,

and chiffons, and flannels for suits. In receding perspective endless stacks

of shoeboxes could be seen, and several citizenesses sat on little low

chairs, one foot shod in an old, worn-out shoe, the other in a shiny new

pump, which they stamped on the carpet with a preoccupied air.

Somewhere in the depths, around a corner, gramophones sang and played

music.

But, bypassing all these enchantments, Koroviev and Behemoth made

straight for the junction of the grocery and confectionery departments. Here

there was plenty of room, no cidzenesses in scarves and little berets were

pushing against the counters, as in the fabric department.

A short, perfectly square man with blue shaven jowls, horn-rimmed

glasses, a brand-new hat, not crumpled and with no sweat stains on the band,

in a lilac coat and orange kid gloves, stood by the counter grunting

something peremptorily. A sales clerk in a clean white smock and a blue hat

was waiting on the lilac client. With the sharpest of knives, much like the

knife stolen by Matthew Levi, he was removing from a weeping, plump pink

salmon its snake-like, silvery skin.

`This department is splendid, too,' Koroviev solemnly acknowledged,

'and the foreigner is a likeable fellow,' he benevolently pointed his finger

at the lilac back.

'No, Fagott, no,' Behemoth replied pensively, `you're mistaken, my

friend: the lilac gendeman’s face lacks something, in my opinion.'

The lilac back twitched, but probably by chance, for the foreigner was

surely unable to understand what Koroviev and his companion were saying in

Russian.

'Is good?' the lilac purchaser asked sternly.

Top-notch!' replied the sales clerk, cockily slipping the edge of the

knife under the skin.

'Good I like, bad I don’t,' the foreigner said sternly.

'Right you are!' the sales clerk rapturously replied.

Here our acquaintances walked away from the foreigner and his salmon to

the end of the confectionery counter.

'It's hot today,' Koroviev addressed a young, red-cheeked salesgirl and

received no reply to his words. 'How much are the mandarins?' Koroviev then

inquired of her.

'Fifteen kopecks a pound,' replied the salesgirl.

'Everything's so pricey,' Koroviev observed with a sigh, 'hm … hm

…' He thought a little longer and then invited his companion: 'Eat up,

Behemoth.'

The fat fellow put his primus under his arm, laid hold of the top

mandarin on the pyramid, straight away gobbled it up skin and all, and began

on a second.

The salesgirl was overcome with mortal terror.

'You're out of your mind!' she shouted, losing her colour. 'Give me the

receipt! The receipt!' and she dropped the confectionery tongs.

'My darling, my dearest, my beauty,' Koroviev rasped, leaning over the

counter and winking at the salesgirl, 'we're out of currency today … what

can we do? But I swear to you, by next time, and no later than Monday, we’ll

pay it all in pure cash! We’re from near by, on Sadovaya, where they’re

having the fire …'

Behemoth, after swallowing a third mandarin, put his paw into a clever

construction of chocolate bars, pulled out the bottom one, which of course

made the whole thing collapse, and swallowed it together with its gold

wrapper.

The sales clerks behind the fish counter stood as if petrified, their

knives in their hands, the lilac foreigner swung around to the robbers, and

here it turned out that Behemoth was mistaken: there was nothing lacking in

the lilac one’s face, but, on the contrary, rather some superfluity of

hanging jowls and furtive eyes.

Turning completely yellow, the salesgirl anxiously cried for the whole

store to hear:

'Palosich! [3] Palosich!'

The public from the fabric department came thronging at this cry, while

Behemoth, stepping away from the confectionery temptations, thrust his paw

into a barrel labelled 'Choice Kerch Herring', [4] pulled out a couple of

herring, and swallowed them, spitting out the tails.

'Palosich!' the desperate cry came again from behind the confectionery

counter, and from behind the fish counter a sales clerk with a goatee

barked:

'What's this you’re up to, vermin?'

Pavel Yosifovich was already hastening to the scene of the action. He

was an imposing man in a clean white smock, like a surgeon, with a pencil

sticking out of the pocket. Pavel Yosifovich was obviously an experienced

man. Seeing the tail of the third herring in Behemoth’s mouth, he instantly

assessed the situation, understood decidedly everything, and, without

getting into any arguments with the insolent louts, waved his arm into the

distance, commanding:

'Whistle!'

The doorman flew from the mirrored door out to the corner of the

Smolensky market-place and dissolved in a sinister whisding. The public

began to surround the blackguards, and then Koroviev stepped into the

affair.

'Citizens!' he called out in a high, vibrating voice, 'what's going on

here? Eh? Allow me to ask you that! The poor man' - Koroviev let some tremor

into his voice and pointed to Behemoth, who immediately concocted a woeful

physiognomy — 'the poor man spends all day reparating primuses. He got

hungry … and where’s he going to get currency?'

To this Pavel Yosifovich, usually restrained and calm, shouted sternly:

'You just stop that!' and waved into the distance, impatiently now.

Then the trills by the door resounded more merrily. But Koroviev, unabashed

by Pavel Yosifovich’s pronouncement, went on:

'Where? — I ask you this entire question! He’s languishing with hunger

and thirst, he’s hot. So the hapless fellow took and sampled a mandarin. And

the total worth of that mandarin is three kopecks. And here they go

whistling like spring nightingales in the woods, bothering the police,

tearing them away from their business. But he’s allowed, eh?' and here

Koroviev pointed to the lilac fat man, which caused the strongest alarm to

appear on his face. `Who is he? Eh? Where did he come from? And why?

Couldn’t we do widiout him? Did we invite him, or what? Of course,' the

ex-choirmaster bawled at the top of his lungs, twisting his mouth

sarcastically, 'just look at him, in his smart lilac suit, all swollen with

salmon, all stuffed with currency — and us, what about the likes of us?! …

I’m bitter! Bitter, bitter!'[5] Koroviev wailed, like the best man at an

old-fashioned wedding.

This whole stupid, tacdess, and probably politically harmful speech

made Pavel Yosifovich shake with wrath, but, strange as it may seem, one

could see by the eyes of the crowding public mat it provoked sympathy in a

great many people. And when Behemom, putting a torn, dirty sleeve to his

eyes, exclaimed tragically:

`Thank you, my faithful friend, you stood up for the sufferer!' - a

miracle occurred. A most decent, quiet little old man, poorly but cleanly

dressed, a little old man buying three macaroons in the confectionery

department, was suddenly transformed. His eyes flashed with bellicose fire,

he turned purple, hurled the little bag of macaroons on the floor, and

shouted 'True!' in a child’s high voice. Then he snatched up a tray,

dirowing from it the remains of the chocolate Eiffel Tower demolished by

Behemoth, brandished it, tore the foreigner’s hat off with his left hand,

and with his right swung and struck the foreigner flat on his bald head with

the tray. There was a roll as of the noise one hears when sheets of metal

are thrown down from a truck. The fat man, turning white, fell backwards and

sat in the barrel of Kerch herring, spouting a fountain of brine from it.

Straight away a second miracle occurred. The lilac one, having fallen into

the barrel, shouted in pure Russian, with no trace of any accent:

'Murder! Police! The bandits are murdering me!' evidently having

mastered, owing to the shock, this language hitherto unknown to him.

Then the doorman’s whistling ceased, and amid the crowds of agitated

shoppers two military helmets could be glimpsed approaching. But the

perfidious Behemoth doused the confectionery counter with benzene from his

primus, as one douses a bench in a bathhouse with a tub of water, and it

blazed up of itself. The flame spurted upwards and ran along the counter,

devouring the beautiful paper ribbons on the fruit baskets. The salesgirls

dashed shrieking from behind the counters, and as soon as they came from

behind them, the linen curtains on the windows blazed up and the benzene on

the floor ignited.

The public, at once raising a desperate cry, shrank back from the

confectionery department, running down the no longer needed Pavel

Yosifovich, and from behind the fish counter the sales clerks with their

whetted knives trotted in single file towards the door of the rear exit.

The lilac citizen, having extracted himself from the barrel, thoroughly

drenched with herring juice, heaved himself over the salmon on the counter

and followed after them. The glass of the mirrored front doors clattered and

spilled down, pushed out by fleeing people, while the two blackguards,

Koroviev and the glutton Behemoth, got lost somewhere, but where — it was

impossible to grasp. Only afterwards did eyewitnesses who had been present

at the starting of the fire in the currency store in Smolensky market-place

tell how the two hooligans supposedly flew up to the ceiling and there

popped like children’s balloons. It is doubtful, of course, that things

happened that way, but what we don’t know, we don’t know.

But we do know that exactly one minute after the happening in Smolensky

market-place, Behemoth and Koroviev both turned up on the sidewalk of the

boulevard just by the house of Griboedov’s aunt. Koroviev stood by the fence

and spoke:

'Hah! This is the writers' house! You know, Behemoth, I’ve heard many

good and flattering things about this house. Pay attention to this house, my

friend. It’s pleasant to think how under this roof no end of talents are

being sheltered and nurtured.'

'Like pineapples in a greenhouse,' said Behemoth and, the better to

admire the cream-coloured building with columns, he climbed the concrete

footing of the cast-iron fence.

`Perfectly correct,' Koroviev agreed with his inseparable companion,

'and a sweet awe creeps into one’s heart at the thought that in this house

there is now ripening the future author of a Don Quixote or a Faust, or,

devil take me, a Dead Souls. Eh?'

'Frightful to think of,' agreed Behemoth.

'Yes,' Koroviev went on, 'one can expect astonishing things from the

hotbeds of this house, which has united under its roof several thousand

zealots resolved to devote their lives to the service of Melpomene,

Polyhymnia and Thalia. [7] You can imagine the noise that will arise when

one of them, for starters, offers the reading public The Inspector General

or, if worse comes to worst, Evgeny Onegin.'[9]

'Quite easily,' Behemoth again agreed.

'Yes,' Koroviev went on, anxiously raising his finger, 'but! … But, I

say, and I repeat this but … Only if these tender hothouse plants are not

attacked by some microorganism that gnaws at their roots so that they rot!

And it does happen with pineapples! Oh, my, does it!'

'Incidentally,' inquired Behemoth, putting his round head through an

opening in the fence, 'what are they doing on the veranda?'

'Having dinner,' explained Koroviev, 'and to that I will add, my dear,

that the restaurant here is inexpensive and not bad at all. And, by the way,

like any tourist before continuing his trip, I feel a desire to have a bite

and drink a big, ice-cold mug of beer.'

'Me, too,' replied Behemoth, and the two blackguards marched down the

asphalt path under the lindens straight to the veranda of the unsuspecting

restaurant.

A pale and bored citizeness in white socks and a white beret with a nib

sat on a Viennese chair at the corner entrance to the veranda, where amid

the greenery of the trellis an opening for the entrance had been made. In

front of her on a simple kitchen table lay a fat book of the ledger variety,

in which the citizeness, for unknown reasons, wrote down all those who

entered the restaurant. It was precisely this citizeness who stopped

Koroviev and Behemoth.

'Your identification cards?' She was gazing in amazement at Koroviev’s

pince-nez, and also at Behemoth’s primus and Behemoth’s torn elbow.

`A thousand pardons, but what identification cards?' asked Koroviev in

surprise.

'You're writers?' the cidzeness asked in her turn.

'Unquestionably,' Koroviev answered with dignity.

" Your identification cards?' the citizeness repeated.

'My sweetie …' Koroviev began tenderly.

'I'm no sweetie,' interrupted the citizeness.

'More's the pity,' Koroviev said disappointedly and went on; 'Well, so,

if you don’t want to be a sweetie, which would be quite pleasant, you don’t

have to be. So, then, to convince yourself that Dostoevsky was a writer, do

you have to ask for his identification card? Just take any five pages from

any one of his novels and you’ll be convinced, without any identification

card, that you’re dealing with a writer. And I don’t think he even had any

identification card! What do you think? ' Koroviev turned to Behemoth.

'I'll bet he didn’t,' replied Behemoth, setting the primus down on the

table beside the ledger and wiping the sweat from his sooty forehead with

his hand.

'You're not Dostoevsky,' said the citizeness, who was getting muddled

by Koroviev.

'Well, who knows, who knows,' he replied.

`Dostoevsky's dead,' said the citizeness, but somehow not very

confidently.

'I protest!' Behemoth exclaimed hotly. 'Dostoevsky is immortal!'

'Your identification cards, citizens,' said the citizeness.

'Good gracious, this is getting to be ridiculous!' Koroviev would not

give in. 'A writer is defined not by any identity card, but by what he

writes. How do you know what plots are swarming in my head? Or in this

head?' and he pointed at Behemoth’s head, from which the latter at once

removed the cap, as if to let the citizeness examine it better.

'Step aside, citizens,' she said, nervously now.

Koroviev and Behemoth stepped aside and let pass some writer in a grey

suit with a tie-less, summer white shirt, the collar of which lay wide open

on the lapels of his jacket, and with a newspaper under his arm. The writer

nodded affably to the citizeness, in passing put some nourish in the

proffered ledger, and proceeded to the veranda.

'Alas, not to us, not to us,' Koroviev began sadly, 'but to him will go

that ice-cold mug of beer, which you and I, poor wanderers, so dreamed of

together. Our position is woeful and difficult, and I don’t know what to

do.'

Behemoth only spread his arms bitterly and put his cap on his round

head, covered with thick hair very much resembling a cat’s fur.

And at that moment a low but peremptory voice sounded over the head of

the citizeness:

'Let them pass, Sofya Pavlovna.'[10]

The citizeness with the ledger was amazed. Amidst the greenery, of the

trellis appeared the white tailcoated chest and wedge-shaped beard of the

freebooter. He was looking affably at the two dubious ragamuffins and,

moreover, even making inviting gestures to them. Archibald Archibaldovich’s

authority was something seriously felt in the restaurant under his

management, and Sofya Pavlovna obediently asked Koroviev:

'What is your name?'

'Panaev,'" he answered courteously. The citizeness wrote this name down

and raised a questioning glance to Behemoth.

'Skabichevsky,'[12] the latter squeaked, for some reason pointing to

his primus. Sofya Pavlovna wrote this down, too, and pushed the book towards

the visitors for them to sign. Koroviev wrote 'Skabichevsky' next to the

name 'Panaev', and Behemoth wrote `Panaev' next to 'Skabichevsky'.

Archibald Archibaldovich, to the utter amazement of Sofya Pavlovna,

smiled seductively, and led the guests to the best table, at the opposite

end of the veranda, where the deepest shade lay, a table next to which the

sun played merrily through one of the gaps in the trellis greenery, while

Sofya Pavlovna, blinking with amazement, studied for a long time the strange

entry made in the book by the unexpected visitors.

Archibald Archibaldovich surprised the waiters no less than he had

Sofya Pavlovna. He personally drew a chair back from the table, inviting

Koroviev to sit down, winked to one, whispered something to the other, and

the two waiters began bustling around the new guests, one of whom set his

primus down on the floor next to his scuffed shoe.

The old yellow-stained tablecloth immediately disappeared from the

table, another shot up into the air, crackling with starch, white as a

Bedouin’s burnous, and Archibald Archibaldovich was already whispering

softly but very significantly, bending right to Koroviev’s ear:

What may I treat you to? I have a special little balyk here … bagged

at the architects' congress…'

'Oh … just give us a bite of something … eh? …' Koroviev mumbled

good-naturedly, sprawling on the chair.

`I understand …' Archibald Archibaldovich replied meaningfully,

closing his eyes.

Seeing the way the chief of the restaurant treated the rather dubious

visitors, the waiters laid aside their suspicions and got seriously down to

business. One was already offering a match to Behemoth, who had taken a butt

from his pocket and put it in his mouth, the other raced up clinking with

green glass and at their places arranged goblets, tumblers, and those

thin-walled glasses from which it is so nice to drink seltzer under the

awning … no, skipping ahead, let us say: it used to be so nice to drink

seltzer under the awning of the unforgettable Griboedov veranda.

`I might recommend a little fillet of hazel-grouse,' Archibald

Archibaldovich murmured musically. The guest in the cracked pince-nez fully

approved the commander of the brig’s suggestions and gazed at him

benevolently through the useless bit of glass.

The fiction writer Petrakov-Sukhovey, dining at the next table with his

wife, who was finishing a pork chop, noticed with the keenness of

observation proper to all writers the wooing of Archibald Archibaldovich,

and was quite, quite surprised. And his wife, a very respectable lady, even

simply became jealous of Koroviev over the pirate, and even rapped with her

teaspoon, as if to say: why are we kept waiting? … It’s time the ice cream

was served. What’s the matter? …

However, after sending Mrs Petrakov a seductive smile, Archibald

Archibaldovich dispatched a waiter to her, but did not leave his dear guests

himself. Ah, how intelligent Archibald Archibaldovich was! And his powers of

observation were perhaps no less keen than those of the writers themselves!

Archibald Archibaldovich knew about the seance at the Variety, and

about many other events of those days; he had heard, but, unlike the others,

had not closed his ears to, the word 'checkered' and the word 'cat'.

Archibald Archibaldovich guessed at once who his visitors were. And, having

guessed, naturally did not start quarrelling with them. And that Sofya

Pavlovna was a good one! To come up with such a thing — barring the way to

the veranda for those two! Though what could you expect of her! …

Haughtily poking her little spoon into the slushy ice cream, Mrs

Petrakov, with displeased eyes, watched the table in front of the two motley

buffoons become overgrown with dainties as if by magic. Shiny clean lettuce

leaves were already sticking from a bowl of fresh caviar … an instant

later a sweating silver bucket appeared, brought especially on a separate

little table…

Only when convinced that everything had been done impeccably, only when

there came flying in the waiter’s hands a covered pan with something

gurgling in it, did Archibald Archibaldovich allow himself to leave the two

mysterious visitors, and that after having first whispered to them:

'Excuse me! One moment! I’ll see to the fillets personally!'

He flew away from the table and disappeared into an inner passage of

the restaurant. If any observer had been able to follow the further actions

of Archibald Archibaldovich, they would undoubtedly have seemed somewhat

mysterious to him.

The chief did not go to the kitchen to supervise the fillets at all,

but went to the restaurant pantry. He opened it with his own key, locked

himself inside, took two hefty balyks from the icebox, carefully, so as not

to soil his cuffs, wrapped them in newspaper, tied them neatly with string,

and set them aside. Then he made sure that his hat and silk-lined summer

coat were in place in the next room, and only after that proceeded to the

kitchen, where the chef was carefully boning the fillets the pirate had

promised his visitors.

It must be said that there was nothing strange or incomprehensible in

any of Archibald Archibaldovich’s actions, and that they could seem strange

only to a superficial observer. Archibald Archibaldovich’s behaviour was the

perfectly logical result of all that had gone before. A knowledge of the

latest events, and above all Archibald Archibaldovich’s phenomenal

intuition, told the chief of the Griboedov restaurant that his two visitors'

dinner, while abundant and sumptuous, would be of extremely short duration.

And his intuition, which had never yet deceived the former freebooter, did

not let him down this time either.

Just as Koroviev and Behemoth were clinking their second glasses of

wonderful, cold, double-distilled Moskovskaya vodka, the sweaty and excited

chronicler Boba Kandalupsky, famous in Moscow for his astounding

omniscience, appeared on the veranda and at once sat down with the

Petrakovs. Placing his bulging briefcase on the table, Boba immediately put

his lips to Petrakov’s ear and whispered some very tempting things into it.

Madame Petrakov, burning with curiosity, also put her ear to Boba’s plump,

greasy lips. And he, with an occasional furtive look around, went on

whispering and whispering, and one could make out separate words, such as:

'I swear to you! On Sadovaya, on Sadovaya! …' Boba lowered his voice

still more, 'bullets have no effect! … bullets … bullets … benzene …

fire bullets …'

'It's the liars that spread these vile rumours,' Madame Petrakov boomed

in a contralto voice, somewhat louder in her indignation than Boba would

have liked, 'they're the ones who ought to be explained! Well, never mind,

that’s how it will be, they’ll be called to order! Such pernicious lies!'

`Why lies, Antonida Porfirievna!' exclaimed Boba, upset by the

disbelief of the writer’s wife, and again began spinning: 'I tell you,

bullets have no effect! … And then the fire … they went up in the air

… in the air!' Boba went on hissing, not suspecting that those he was

talking about were sitting next to him, delighting in his yarn.

However, this delight soon ceased: from an inner passage of the

restaurant three men, their waists drawn in tightly by belts, wearing

leggings and holding revolvers in their hands, strode precipitously on to

the veranda. The one in front cried ringingly and terribly:

'Don't move!' And at once all three opened fire on the veranda, aiming

at the heads of Koroviev and Behemoth. The two objects of the shooting

instantly melted into air, and a pillar of fire spurted from the primus

directly on to the tent roof. It was as if a gaping maw with black edges

appeared in the tent and began spreading in all directions. The fire leaping

through it rose up to the roof of Griboedov House. Folders full of papers

lying on the window-sill of the editorial office on the second floor

suddenly blazed up, followed by the curtains, and now the fire, howling as

if someone were blowing on it, went on in pillars to the interior of the

aunt’s house.

A few seconds later, down the asphalt paths leading to the cast-iron

fence on the boulevard, whence Ivanushka, the first herald of the disaster,

understood by no one, had come on Wednesday evening, various writers, Sofya

Pavlovna, Boba, Petrakov’s wife and Petrakov, now went running, leaving

their dinners unfinished.

Having stepped out through a side entrance beforehand, not fleeing or

hurrying anywhere, like a captain who must be the last to leave his burning

brig, Archibald Archibaldovich stood calmly in his summer coat with silk

lining, the two balyk logs under his arm.

CHAPTER 29. The Fate of the Master and Margarita is decided.

At sunset, high over the city, on the stone terrace of one of the most

beautiful houses in Moscow, a house built about a hundred and fifty years

ago, there were two: Woland and Azazello. They could not be seen from the

street below, because they were hidden from unwanted eyes by a balustrade

with plaster vases and plaster flowers. But they could see the city almost

to its very edges.

Woland was sitting on a folding stool, dressed in his black soutane.

His long and broad sword was stuck vertically into a crack between two

flags of the terrace so as to make a sundial. The shadow of the sword

lengthened slowly and steadily, creeping towards the black shoes on Satan’s

feet.

Resting his sharp chin on his fist, hunched on the stool with one leg

drawn under him, Woland stared fixedly' at the endless collection of

palaces, gigantic buildings and little hovels destined to be pulled down.

Azazello, having parted with his modern attire — that is, jacket,

bowler hat and patent-leather shoes — and dressed, like Woland, in black,

stood motionless not far from his sovereign, like him with his eyes fixed on

the city.

Woland began to speak:

'Such an interesting city, is it not?'

Azazello stirred and replied respectfully:

'I like Rome better, Messire.'

'Yes, it’s a matter of taste,' replied Woland.

After a while, his voice resounded again:

'And what is that smoke there on the boulevard?'

That is Griboedov’s burning,' replied Azazello.

'It must be supposed that that inseparable pair, Koroviev and Behemoth,

stopped by there?'

'Of that there can be no doubt, Messire.'

Again silence fell, and the two on the terrace gazed at the fragmented,

dazzling sunlight in the upper-floor windows of the huge buildings facing

west. Woland’s eye burned like one of those windows, though Woland had his

back to the sunset.

But here something made Woland turn his attention to the round tower

behind him on the roof. From its wall stepped a tattered, clay-covered,

sullen man in a chiton, in home-made sandals, black-bearded.

'Hah!' exclaimed Woland, looking mockingly at the newcomer. 'Least of

all would I expect you here! What have you come with, uninvited guest?'

'I have come to see you, spirit of evil and sovereign of shadows,' the

newcomer replied, glowering inimically at Woland.

`If you’ve come to see me, why didn’t you wish me a good evening,

former tax collector?' Woland said sternly.

`Because I don’t wish you a good anything,' the newcomer replied

insolendy.

'But you’ll have to reconcile yourself to that,' Woland objected, and a

grin twisted his mouth. 'You no sooner appear on the roof than you produce

an absurdity, and I’ll tell you what it is — it’s your intonation. You

uttered your words as if you don’t acknowledge shadows, or evil either.

Kindly consider the question: what would your good do if evil did not

exist, and what would the earth look like if shadows disappeared from it?

Shadows are cast by objects and people. Here is the shadow of my sword.

Trees and living beings also have shadows. Do you want to skin the whole

earth, tearing all the trees and living things off it, because of your

fantasy of enjoying bare light? You’re a fool.'

'I won’t argue with you, old sophist,' replied Matthew Levi.

'You also cannot argue with me, for the reason I’ve already mentioned:

you’re a fool,' Woland replied and asked: «Well, make it short, don’t weary

me, why have you appeared?'

'He sent me.'

'What did he tell you to say, slave?'

'I'm not a slave,' Matthew Levi replied, growing ever angrier, 'I'm his

disciple.'

'You and I speak different languages, as usual,' responded Woland, 'but

the things we say don’t change for all that. And so? …'

'He has read the master’s work,' said Matthew Levi, 'and asks you to

take the master with you and reward him with peace. Is that hard for you to

do, spirit of evil?'

'Nothing is hard for me to do,' answered Woland, 'you know that very

well.' He paused and added: 'But why don’t you take him with you into the

light?'

'He does not deserve the light, he deserves peace,' Levi said in a

sorrowful voice.

'Tell him it will be done,' Woland replied and added, his eye flashing:

'And leave me immediately.'

'He asks that she who loved him and suffered because of him also be

taken with him,' Levi addressed Woland pleadingly for the first time.

'We would never have thought of it without you. Go.'

Matthew Levi disappeared after that, and Woland called Azazello and

ordered him:

'Fly to them and arrange it all.'

Azazello left the terrace, and Woland remained alone.

But his solitude did not last. Over the flags of the terrace came the

sound of footsteps and animated voices, and before Woland stood Koroviev and

Behemoth. But now the fat fellow had no primus with him, but was loaded with

other things. Thus, under his arm he had a small landscape in a gold frame,

from one hand hung a half-burnt cook’s smock, and in the other he held a

whole salmon with skin and tail. Koroviev and Behemoth reeked of fire.

Behemoth’s mug was all sooty and his cap was badly burnt.

'Greetings, Messire!' cried the irrepressible pair, and Behemoth waved

the salmon.

'A fine sight,' said Woland.

'Imagine, Messire!' Behemoth cried excitedly and joyfully, 'I was taken

for a looter!'

'Judging by the things you’ve brought,' Woland replied, glancing at the

landscape, 'you are a looter!'

'Believe me, Messire …' Behemoth began in a soulful voice.

'No, I don’t,' Woland replied curdy.

'Messire, I swear, I made heroic efforts to save everything I could,

and this is all I was able to rescue.'

'You'd better tell me, why did Griboedov’s catch fire?' asked Woland.

Both Koroviev and Behemoth spread their arms, raised their eyes to

heaven, and Behemoth cried out:

`I can’t conceive why! We were sitting there peacefully, perfectly

quiet, having a bite to eat…'

'And suddenly — bang, bang!' Koroviev picked up, 'gunshots! Crazed with

fear, Behemoth and I ran out to the boulevard, our pursuers followed, we

rushed to Timiriazev! …'[2]

'But the sense of duty,' Behemoth put in, 'overcame our shameful fear

and we went back.'

'Ah, you went back?' said Woland. 'Well, then of course the building

was reduced to ashes.'

To ashes!' Koroviev ruefully confirmed, 'that is, Messire, literally to

ashes, as you were pleased to put it so aptly. Nothing but embers!'

'I hastened,' Behemoth narrated, 'to the meeting room, the one with the

columns, Messire, hoping to bring out something valuable. Ah, Messire, my

wife, if only I had one, was twenty times in danger of being left a widow!

But happily, Messire, I’m not married, and, let me tell you, I’m really

happy that I’m not. Ah, Messire, how can one trade a bachelor’s freedom for

the burdensome yoke…'

'Again some gibberish gets going,' observed Woland.

'I hear and continue,' the cat replied. 'Yes, sir, this landscape here!

It was impossible to bring anything more out of the meeting room, the flames

were beating in my face. I ran to the pantry and rescued the salmon. I ran

to the kitchen and rescued the smock. I think, Messire, that I did

everything I could, and I don’t understand how to explain the sceptical

expression on your face.'

'And what did Koroviev do while you were looting?' asked Woland.

'I was helping the firemen, Messire,' replied Koroviev, pointing to his

torn trousers.

'Ah, if so, then of course a new building will have to be built.'

'It will be built, Messire,' Koroviev responded, `I venture to assure

you of that.'

'Well, so it remains for us to wish that it be better than the old

one,' observed Woland.

'It will be, Messire,' said Koroviev.

'You can believe me,' the cat added, 'I'm a regular prophet.'

'In any case, we’re here, Messire,' Koroviev reported, 'and await your

orders.'

Woland got up from his stool, went over to the balustrade, and alone,

silently, his back turned to his retinue, gazed into the distance for a long

time. Then he stepped away from the edge, lowered himself on to his stool,

and said:

'There will be no orders, you have fulfilled all you could, and for the

moment I no longer need your services. You may rest. Right now a storm is

coming, the last storm, it will complete all that needs completing, and

we’ll be on our way.'

`Very well, Messire,' the two buffoons replied and disappeared

somewhere behind the round central tower, which stood in the middle of the

terrace.

The storm of which Woland had spoken was already gathering on the

horizon. A black cloud rose in the west and cut off half the sun. Then it

covered it entirely. The air became cool on the terrace. A little later it

turned dark.

This darkness which came from the west covered the vast city. Bridges

and palaces disappeared. Everything vanished as if it had never existed in

the world. One fiery thread ran across the whole sky. Then a thunderclap

shook the city. It was repeated, and the storm began. Woland could no longer

be seen in its gloom.

CHAPTER 30. It’s Time! It’s Time!

'You know,' said Margarita, `just as you fell asleep last night, I was

reading about the darkness that came from the Mediterranean Sea … and

those idols, ah, the golden idols! For some reason they never leave me in

peace. I think it’s going to rain now, too. Do you feel how cool it’s

getting?'

'That's all well and good,' replied the master, smoking and breaking up

the smoke with his hand, 'and as for the idols. God be with them … but

what will happen further on is decidedly unclear!'

This conversation occurred at sunset, just at the moment when Matthew

Levi came to Woland on the terrace. The basement window was open, and if

anyone had looked through it, he would have been astonished at how strange

the talkers looked. Margarita had a black cloak thrown directly over her

naked body, and the master was in his hospital underwear. The reason for

this was that Margarita had decidedly nothing to put on, because all her

clothes had stayed in her house, and though this house was very near by,

there was, of course, no question of going there to take her clothes. And

the master, whose clothes were all found in the wardrobe as if he had never

gone anywhere, simply did not want to get dressed, developing before

Margarita the thought that some perfect nonsense was about to begin at any

moment. True, he was clean-shaven for the first time since that autumn night

(in the clinic his beard had been cut with clippers).

The room also had a strange look, and it was very hard to make anything

out in its chaos. Manuscripts were lying on the rug, and on the sofa as

well. A book sat humpbacked on an armchair. And dinner was set out on the

round table, with several bottles standing among the dishes of food. Where

all this food and drink came from was known neither to Margarita nor to the

master. On waking up they found everything already on the table.

Having slept until sunset Saturday, the master and his friend felt

themselves thoroughly fortified, and only one thing told of the previous

day’s adventure — both had a slight ache in the left temple. But with regard

to their minds, there were great changes in both of them, as anyone would

have been convinced who was able to eavesdrop on the conversation in the

basement. But there was decidedly no one to eavesdrop. That little courtyard

was good precisely for being always empty. With each day the greening

lindens and the ivy outside the window exuded an ever stronger smell of

spring, and the rising breeze carried it into the basement.

'Pah, the devil!' exclaimed the master unexpectedly. 'But, just think,

it’s …' he put out his cigarette butt in the ashtray and pressed his head

with his hands. 'No, listen, you’re an intelligent person and have never

been crazy … are you seriously convinced that we were at Satan’s

yesterday?'

'Quite seriously,' Margarita replied.

'Of course, of course,' the master said ironically, 'so now instead of

one madman there are two — husband and wife!' He raised his hands to heaven

and cried: 'No, the devil knows what this is! The devil, the devil…'

Instead of answering, Margarita collapsed on the sofa, burst out

laughing, waved her bare legs, and only then cried out:

'Aie, I can’t … I can’t! You should see what you look like! …'

Having finished laughing, while the master bashfully pulled up his

hospital drawers, Margarita became serious.

'You unwittingly spoke the truth just now,' she began, 'the devil knows

what it is, and the devil, believe me, will arrange everything!' Her eyes

suddenly flashed, she jumped up and began dancing on the spot, crying out:

'How happy I am, how happy I am, how happy I am that I struck a bargain

with him! Oh, Satan, Satan! … You’ll have to live with a witch, my dear!'

Then she rushed to the master, put her arms around his neck, and began

kissing his lips, his nose, his cheeks. Strands of unkempt black hair leaped

at the master, and his cheeks and forehead burned under the kisses.

'And you’ve really come to resemble a witch.'

'And I don’t deny it,' answered Margarita, 'I'm a witch and I’m very

glad of it.'

'Well, all right,' said the master, `so you’re a witch, very nice,

splendid! And I’ve been stolen from the hospital … also very nice! I’ve

been brought here, let’s grant that, too. Let’s even suppose that we won’t

be missed … But tell me, by all that’s holy, how and on what are we going

to live? My concern is for you when I say that, believe me!'

At that moment round-toed shoes and the lower part of a pair of

pinstriped trousers appeared in the window. Then the trousers bent at the

knee and somebody’s hefty backside blocked the daylight.

'Aloisy, are you home?' asked a voice somewhere up above the trousers,

outside the window.

'There, it’s beginning,' said the master.

'Aloisy?' asked Margarita, going closer to the window. 'He was arrested

yesterday. Who’s asking for him? What’s your name?'

That instant the knees and backside vanished, there came the bang of

the gate, after which everything returned to normal. Margarita collapsed on

the sofa and laughed so that tears poured from her eyes. But when she calmed

down, her countenance changed greatly, she began speaking seriously, and as

she spoke she slipped down from the couch, crept over to the master’s knees,

and, looking into his eyes, began to caress his head.

'How you’ve suffered, how you’ve suffered, my poor one! I’m the only

one who knows it. Look, you’ve got white threads in your hair, and an

eternal crease by your lips! My only one, my dearest, don’t think about

anything! You’ve had to think too much, and now I’ll think for you. And I

promise you, I promise, that everything will be dazzlingly well!'

'I'm not afraid of anything, Margot,' the master suddenly answered her

and raised his head, and he seemed to her the same as he had been when he

was inventing that which he had never seen, but of which he knew for certain

that it had been, 'not afraid, because I’ve already experienced it all. They

tried too hard to frighten me, and cannot frighten me with anything any

more. But I pity you, Margot, that’s the trick, that’s why I keep saying it

over and over. Come to your senses! Why do you have to ruin your life with a

sick man and a beggar? Go back! I pity you, that’s why I say it.'

'Oh, you, you …' Margarita whispered, shaking her dishevelled head,

'oh, you faithless, unfortunate man! … Because of you I spent the whole

night yesterday shivering and naked. I lost my nature and replaced it with a

new one, I spent several months sitting in a dark closet thinking about one

thing, about the storm over Yershalaim, I cried my eyes out, and now, when

happiness has befallen us, you drive me away! Well, then I’ll go, I’ll go,

but you should know that you are a cruel man! They’ve devastated your soul!'

Bitter tenderness rose up in the master’s heart, and, without knowing

why, he began to weep, burying his face in Margarita’s hair. Weeping

herself, she whispered to him, and her fingers trembled on the master’s

temples.

'Yes, threads, threads … before my eyes your head is getting covered

with snow … ah, my much-suffering head! Look what eyes you’ve got! There’s

a desert in them … and the shoulders, the shoulders with their burden …

crippled, crippled …' Margarita’s speech was becoming incoherent,

Margarita was shaking with tears.

Then the master wiped his eyes, raised Margarita from her knees, got up

himself and said firmly:

'Enough. You’ve shamed me. Never again will I yield to

faint-heartedness, or come back to this question, be reassured. I know that

we’re both the victims of our mental illness, which you perhaps got from

me… Well, so we’ll bear it together.'

Margarita put her lips close to the master’s ear and whispered:

'I swear to you by your life, I swear by the astrologer’s son whom, you

guessed, that all will be well!'

'Fine, fine,' responded the master, and he added, laughing: 'Of course,

when people have been robbed of everything, like you and me, they seek

salvation from other-worldly powers! Well, so, I agree to seek there.'

'Well, there, there, now you’re your old self, you’re laughing,'

replied Margarita, `and devil take you with your learned words.

Other-worldly or not other-worldly, isn’t it all the same? I want to eat!'

And she dragged the master to the table by the hand.

'I'm not sure this food isn’t about to fall through the floor or fly

out the window,' he said, now completely calm.

'It won’t fly out.'

And just then a nasal voice came through the window:

'Peace be unto you.''

The master gave a start, but Margarita, already accustomed to the

extraordinary, exclaimed:

'Why, it’s Azazello! Ah, how nice, how good!' and, whispering to the

master: 'You see, you see, we’re not abandoned!' - she rushed to open the

door.

'Cover yourself at least,' the master called after her.

'Spit on it,' answered Margarita, already in the corridor.

And there was Azazello bowing, greeting the master, and flashing his

blind eye, while Margarita exclaimed:

'Ah, how glad I am! I’ve never been so glad in my life! But forgive me,

Azazello, for being naked!'

Azazello begged her not to worry, assuring her that he had seen not

only naked women, but even women with their skin flayed clean off, and

willingly sat down at the table, having first placed some package wrapped in

dark brocade in the corner by the stove.

Margarita poured Azazello some cognac, and he willingly drank it. The

master, not taking his eyes off him, quietly pinched his own left hand under

the table. But the pinches did not help. Azazello did not melt into air,

and, to tell the truth, there was no need for that. There was nothing

terrible in the short, reddish-haired man, unless it was his eye with

albugo, but that occurs even without sorcery, or unless his clothes were not

quite ordinary — some sort of cassock or cloak — but again, strictly

considered, that also happens. He drank his cognac adroitly, too, as all

good people do, by the glassful and without nibbling. From this same cognac

the master’s head became giddy, and he began to think:

'No, Margarita’s right … Of course, this is the devil’s messenger

sitting before me. No more than two nights ago, I myself tried to prove to

Ivan that it was precisely Satan whom he had met at the Patriarch’s Ponds,

and now for some reason I got scared of the thought and started babbling

something about hypnotists and hallucinations … Devil there’s any

hypnotists in it! …'

He began looking at Azazello more closely and became convinced that

there was some constraint in his eyes, some thought that he would not reveal

before its time. 'This is not just a visit, he’s come on some errand,'

thought the master.

His powers of observation did not deceive him. After drinking a third

glass of cognac, which produced no effect in Azazello, the visitor spoke

thus:

`A cosy little basement, devil take me! Only one question arises — what

is there to do in this little basement?'

That’s just what I was saying,' the master answered, laughing.

'Why do you trouble me, Azazello?' asked Margarita. 'We'll live somehow

or other!'

'Please, please!' cried Azazello, 'I never even thought of troubling

you. I say the same thing — somehow or other! Ah, yes! I almost forgot …

Messire sends his regards and has also asked me to tell you that he invites

you to go on a little excursion with him — if you wish, of course. What do

you say to that?'

Margarita nudged the master under the table with her leg.

With great pleasure,' replied the master, studying Azazello, who

continued:

`We hope that Margarita Nikolaevna will also not decline the

invitation?'

'I certainly will not,' said Margarita, and again her leg brushed

against the master’s.

`A wonderful thing!' exclaimed Azazello. 'I like that! One, two, and

it’s done! Not like that time in the Alexandrovsky Garden!'

'Ah, don’t remind me, Azazello, I was stupid then. And anyhow you

mustn’t blame me too severely for it — you don’t meet unclean powers every

day!'

That you don’t!' agreed Azazello. 'Wouldn't it be pleasant if it was

every day!'

'I like quickness myself,' Margarita said excitedly, 'I like quickness

and nakedness… Like from a Mauser — bang! Ah, how he shoots!' Margarita

cried, turning to the master. `A seven under the pillow — any pip you

like…' Margarita was getting drunk, and it made her eyes blaze.

'And again I forgot!' cried Azazello, slapping himself on the forehead.

`I'm quite frazzled! Messire sends you a present,' here he adverted

precisely to the master, 'a bottle of wine. I beg you to note that it’s the

same wine the procurator of Judea drank. Falernian wine.'

It was perfectly natural that such a rarity should arouse great

attention in both Margarita and the master. Azazello drew from the piece of

dark coffin brocade a completely mouldy jug. The wine was sniffed, poured

into glasses, held up to the light in the window, which was disappearing

before the storm.

To Woland’s health!' exclaimed Margarita, raising her glass.

All three put their glasses to their lips and took big gulps. At once

the pre-storm light began to fade in the master’s eyes, his breath failed

him, and he felt the end coming. He could still see the deathly pale

Margarita, helplessly reaching her arms out to him, drop her head to the

table and then slide down on the floor.

`Poisoner…' the master managed to cry out. He wanted to snatch the

knife from the table and strike Azazello with it, but his hand slid

strengthlessly from the tablecloth, everything around the master in the

basement took on a black colour and then vanished altogether. He fell

backwards and in falling cut the skin of his temple on the corner of his

desk.

When the poisoned ones lay still, Azazello began to act. First of all,

he rushed out of the window and a few instants later was in the house where

Margarita Nikolaevna lived. The ever precise and accurate Azazello wanted to

make sure that everything was carried out properly. And everything turned

out to be in perfect order. Azazello saw a gloomy woman, who was waiting for

her husband’s return, come out of her bedroom, suddenly turn pale, clutch

her heart, and cry helplessly:

'Natasha … somebody … come …' and fall to the floor in the living

room before reaching the study.

'Everything's in order,' said Azazello. A moment later he was beside

the fallen lovers. Margarita lay with her face against the little rug. With

his iron hands, Azazello turned her over like a doll, face to him, and

peered at her. The face of the poisoned woman was changing before his eyes.

Even in the gathering dusk of the storm, one could see the temporary witch’s

cast in her eyes and the cruelty and violence of her features disappear. The

face of the dead woman brightened and finally softened, and the look of her

bared teeth was no longer predatory but simply that of a suffering woman.

Then Azazello unclenched her white teeth and poured into her mouth

several drops of the same wine with which he had poisoned her. Margarita

sighed, began to rise without Azazello’s help, sat up and asked weakly:

'Why, Azazello, why? What have you done to me?'

She saw the outstretched master, shuddered, and whispered:

'I didn’t expect this … murderer!'

'Oh, no, no,' answered Azazello, 'he'll rise presently. Ah, why are you

so nervous?'

Margarita believed him at once, so convincing was the red-headed

demon’s voice. She jumped up, strong and alive, and helped to give the

outstretched man a drink of wine. Opening his eyes, he gave a dark look and

with hatred repeated his last word:

'Poisoner…'

'Ah, insults are the usual reward for a good job!' replied Azazello.

'Are you blind? Well, quickly recover your sight!'

Here the master rose, looked around with alive and bright eyes, and

asked:

'What does this new thing mean?'

'It means,' replied Azazello, 'that it’s time for us to go. The storm

is already thundering, do you hear? It’s getting dark. The steeds are pawing

the ground, your little garden is shuddering. Say farewell, quickly say

farewell to your little basement.'

'Ah, I understand…' the master said, glancing around, 'you've killed

us, we’re dead. Oh, how intelligent that is! And how timely! Now I

understand everything.'

'Oh, for pity’s sake,' replied Azazello, 'is it you I hear talking?

Your friend calls you a master, you can think, so how can you be dead?

Is it necessary, in order to consider yourself alive, to sit in a basement

and dress yourself in a shirt and hospital drawers? It’s ridiculous! …'

'I understand everything you’re saying,' the master cried out, 'don't

go on! You’re a thousand times right!'

'Great Woland!' Margarita began to echo him. 'Great Woland! He thought

it out much better than I did! But the novel, the novel,' she shouted to the

master, 'take the novel with you wherever you fly!' «

'No need,' replied the master, 'I remember it by heart.'

`But you won’t … you won’t forget a single word of it?' Margarita

asked, pressing herself to her lover and wiping the blood from his cut

temple.

'Don't worry. I’ll never forget anything now,' he replied.

'Fire, then!' cried Azazello. 'Fire, with which all began and with

which we end it all.'

'Fire!' Margarita cried terribly. The little basement window banged,

the curtain was beaten aside by the wind. The sky thundered merrily and

briefly. Azazello thrust his clawed hand into the stove, pulled out a

smoking brand, and set fire to the tablecloth. Then he set fire to the stack

of old newspapers on the sofa, and next to the manuscripts and the window

curtain.

The master, already drunk with the impending ride, flung some book from

the shelf on to the table, ruffled its pages in the flame of the tablecloth,

and the book blazed up merrily.

'Burn, burn, former life!'

'Burn, suffering!' cried Margarita.

The room was already swaying in crimson pillars, and along with the

smoke the three ran out of the door, went up the stone steps, and came to

the yard. The first thing they saw there was the landlord’s cook sitting on

the ground. Beside her lay spilled potatoes and several bunches of onions.

The cook’s state was comprehensible. Three black steeds snorted by the shed,

twitching, sending up fountains of earth. Margarita mounted first, then

Azazello, and last the master. The cook moaned and wanted to raise her hand

to make the sign of the cross, but Azazello shouted menacingly from the

saddle:

'I'll cut your hand off!' He whistled, and the steeds, breaking through

the linden branches, soared up and pierced the low black cloud. Smoke poured

at once from the basement window. From below came the weak, pitiful cry of

the cook:

'We're on fire…'

The steeds were already racing over the rooftops of Moscow.

'I want to bid farewell to the city,' the master cried to Azazello, who

rode at their head. Thunder ate up the end of the master’s phrase. Azazello

nodded and sent his horse into a gallop. The dark cloud flew precipitously

to meet the fliers, but as yet gave not a sprinkle of rain.

They flew over the boulevards, they saw little figures of people

scatter, running for shelter from the rain. The first drops were falling.

They flew over smoke — all that remained of Griboedov House. They flew over

the city which was already being flooded by darkness. Over them lightning

flashed. Soon the roofs gave place to greenery. Only then did the rain pour

down, transforming the fliers into three huge bubbles in the water.

Margarita was already familiar with the sensation of flight, but the

master was not, and he marvelled at how quickly they reached their goal, the

one to whom he wished to bid farewell, because he had no one else to bid

farewell to. He immediately recognized through the veil of rain the building

of Stravinsky’s clinic, the river, and the pine woods on the other bank,

which he had studied so well. They came down in the clearing of a copse not

far from the clinic.

'I'll wait for you here,' cried Azazello, his hands to his mouth, now

lit up by lightning, now disappearing behind the grey veil. 'Say your

farewells, but be quick!'

The master and Margarita jumped from their saddles and flew, flickering

like watery shadows, through the clinic garden. A moment later the master,

with an accustomed hand, was pushing aside the balcony grille of room

no.

117. Margarita followed after him. They stepped into Ivanushka’s room,

unseen and unnoticed in the rumbling and howling of the storm. The master

stopped by the bed. Ivanushka lay motionless, as before, when for the first

time he had watched a storm in the house of his repose. But he was not

weeping as he had been then. Once he had taken a good look at the dark

silhouette that burst into his room from the balcony, he raised himself,

held out his hands, and said joyfully:

'Ah, it’s you! And I kept waiting and waiting for you! And here you

are, my neighbour!'

To this the master replied:

'I'm here, but unfortunately I cannot be your neighbour any longer. I’m

flying away for ever, and I’ve come to you only to say farewell.'

'I knew that, I guessed it,' Ivan replied quietly and asked: 'You met

him?'

'Yes,' said the master. 'I've come to say farewell to you, because you

are the only person I’ve talked with lately.'

Ivanushka brightened up and said:

`It's good that you stopped off here. I’ll keep my word, I won’t write

any more poems. I’m interested in something else now,' Ivanushka smiled and

with mad eyes looked somewhere past the master. 'I want to write something

else. You know, while I lay here, a lot became clear to me.'

The master was excited by these words and, sitting on the edge of

Ivanushka’s bed, said:

'Ah, but that’s good, that’s good. You’ll write a sequel about him.'

Ivanushka’s eyes lit up.

'But won’t you do that yourself?' Here he hung his head and added

pensively: 'Ah, yes … what am I asking?' Ivanushka looked sidelong at the

floor, his eyes fearful.

'Yes,' said the master, and his voice seemed unfamiliar and hollow to

Ivanushka, `I won’t write about him any more now. I’ll be occupied with

other things.'

A distant whistle cut through the noise of the storm.

'Do you hear?' asked the master.

'The noise of the storm …'

'No, I’m being called, it’s time for me to go,' explained the master,

and he got up from the bed.

" Wait! One word more,' begged Ivan. «Did you find her? Did she remain

faithful to you?'

`Here she is,' the master replied and pointed to the wall. The dark

Margarita separated from the white wall and came up to the bed. She looked

at the young man lying there and sorrow could be read in her eyes.

'Poor boy, poor boy …' Margarita whispered soundlessly and bent down

to the bed.

'She's so beautiful,' Ivan said, without envy, but sadly, and with a

certain quiet tenderness. 'Look how well everything has turned out for you.

But not so for me.' Here he thought a little and added thoughtfully:

'Or else maybe it is so…'

'It is so, it is so,' whispered Margarita, and she bent closer to him.

'I'm going to kiss you now, and everything will be as it should be with

you … believe me in that, I’ve seen everything, I know everything …' The

young man put his arms around her neck and she kissed him.

'Farewell, disciple,' the master said barely audibly and began melting

into air. He disappeared, and Margarita disappeared with him. The balcony

grille was closed.

Ivanushka fell into anxiety. He sat up in bed, looked around uneasily,

even moaned, began talking to himself, got up. The storm raged more and

more, and evidendy stirred up his soul. He was also upset by the troubling

footsteps and muted voices that his ear, accustomed to the constant silence,

heard outside the door. He called out, now nervous and trembling:

'Praskovya Fyodorovna!'

Praskovya Fyodorovna was already coming into the room, looking at

Ivanushka questioningly and uneasily.

'What? What is it?' she asked. The storm upsets you? Never mind, never

mind … we’ll help you now … I’ll call the doctor now …'

'No, Praskovya Fyodorovna, you needn’t call the doctor,' said

Ivanushka, looking anxiously not at Praskovya Fyodorovna but into the wall.

'There's nothing especially the matter with me. I can sort things out

now, don’t worry. But you’d better tell me,' Ivan begged soulfully, 'what

just happened in room one-eighteen?'

'Eighteen?' Praskovya Fyodorovna repeated, and her eyes became furtive.

'Why, nothing happened there.' But her voice was false, Ivanushka

noticed it at once and said:

'Eh, Praskovya Fyodorovna! You’re such a truthful person… You think

I’ll get violent? No, Praskovya Fyodorovna, that won’t happen. You’d better

speak direcdy, for I can feel everything through the wall.'

'Your neighbour has just passed away,' whispered Praskovya Fyodorovna,

unable to overcome her truthfulness and kindness, and, all clothed in a

flash of lightning, she looked fearfully at Ivanushka. But nothing terrible

happened to Ivanushka. He only raised his finger significandy and said:

'I knew it! I assure you, Praskovya Fyodorovna, that yet another person

has just passed away in the city. I even know who,' here Ivanushka smiled

mysteriously. 'It's a woman!'

CHAPTER 31. On Sparrow Hills.

The storm was swept away without a trace, and a multicoloured rainbow,

its arch thrown across all of Moscow, stood in the sky, drinking water from

the Moscow River. High up, on a hill between two copses, three dark

silhouettes could be seen. Woland, Koroviev and Behemoth sat in the saddle

on three black horses, looking at the city spread out beyond the river, with

the fragmented sun glittering in thousands of windows facing west, and at

the gingerbread towers of the Devichy Convent. [2]

There was a noise in the air, and Azazello, who had the master and

Margarita flying in the black tail of his cloak, alighted with them beside

the waiting group.

'We had to trouble you a little, Margarita Nikolaevna and master,'

Woland began after some silence, 'but you won’t grudge me that. I don’t

think you will regret it. So, then,' he addressed the master alone, 'bid

farewell to the city. It’s time for us to go,' Woland pointed with his

black-gauntleted hand to where numberless suns melted the glass beyond the

river, to where, above these suns, stood the mist, smoke and steam of the

city scorched all day.

The master threw himself out of the saddle, left the mounted ones, and

ran to the edge of the hillside. The black cloak dragged on the ground

behind him. The master began to look at the city. In the first moments a

wringing sadness crept over his heart, but it very quickly gave wav to a

sweetish anxiety, a wondering gypsy excitement.

`For ever! … That needs to be grasped,' the master whispered and

licked his dry, cracked lips. He began to heed and take precise note of

everything that went on in his soul. His excitement turned, as it seemed to

him, into a feeling of deep and grievous offence. But it was unstable,

vanished, and gave way for some reason to a haughty indifference, and that

to a foretaste of enduring peace.

The group of riders waited silently for the master. The group of riders

watched the black, long figure on the edge of the hillside gesticulate, now

raising his head, as if trying to reach across the whole city with his eyes,

to peer beyond its limits, now hanging his head down, as if studying the

trampled, meagre grass under his feet. The silence was broken by the bored

Behemoth. `Allow me, maltre,' he began, 'to give a farewell whisde before

the ride.'

'You may frighten the lady,' Woland answered, 'and, besides, don’t

forget that all your outrages today are now at an end.'

'Ah, no, no, Messire,' responded Margarita, who sat side-saddle, arms

akimbo, the sharp corner of her train hanging to the ground, 'allow him, let

him whisde. I’m overcome with sadness before the long journey. Isn’t it

true, Messire, it’s quite natural even when a person knows that happiness is

waiting at the end of the road? Let him make us laugh, or I’m afraid it will

end in tears, and everything will be spoiled before the journey!'

Woland nodded to Behemoth, who became all animated, jumped down from

the saddle, put his fingers in his mouth, puffed out his cheeks, and

whistled. Margarita’s ears rang. Her horse reared, in the copse dry twigs

rained down from the trees, a whole flock of crows and sparrows flew up, a

pillar of dust went sweeping down to the river, and, as an excursion boat

was passing the pier, one could see several of the passengers' caps blow off

into the water.

The whistle made the master start, yet he did not turn, but began

gesticulating still more anxiously, raising his hand to the sky as if

threatening the city. Behemoth gazed around proudly.

'That was whistled, I don’t argue,' Koroviev observed condescendingly,

'whistled indeed, but, to be impartial, whistled rather middlingly.'

'I'm not a choirmaster,' Behemoth replied with dignity, puffing up, and

he winked unexpectedly at Margarita.

'Give us a try, for old times' sake,' Koroviev said, rubbed his hand,

and breathed on his fingers.

'Watch out, watch out,' came the stern voice of Woland on his horse,

'no inflicting of injuries.'

'Messire, believe me,' Koroviev responded, placing his hand on his

heart, 'in fun, merely in fun …' Here he suddenly stretched himself

upwards, as if he were made of rubber, formed the fingers of his right hand

into some clever arrangement, twisted himself up like a screw, and then,

suddenly unwinding, whistled.

This whisde Margarita did not hear, but she saw it in the moment when

she, together with her fiery steed, was thrown some twenty yards away. An

oak tree beside her was torn up by the roots, and the ground was covered

with cracks all the way to the river. A huge slab of the bank, together with

the pier and the restaurant, sagged into the river. The water boiled, shot

up, and the entire excursion boat with its perfectly unharmed passengers was

washed on to the low bank opposite. A jackdaw, killed by Fagott’s whistle,

was flung at the feet of Margarita’s snorting steed.

The master was startled by this whistle. He clutched his head and ran

back to the group of waiting companions.

'Well, then,' Woland addressed him from the height of his steed, 'is

your farewell completed?'

'Yes, it’s completed,' the master replied and, having calmed down,

looked directly and boldly into Woland’s face.

And then over the hills like a trumpet blast rolled Woland’s terrible

voice:

'It's time!!' - and with it the sharp whistle and guffaw of Behemoth.

The steeds tore off, and the riders rose into the air and galloped.

Margarita felt her furious steed champing and straining at the bit. Woland’s

cloak billowed over the heads of the cavalcade; the cloak began to cover the

evening sky. When the black shroud was momentarily blown aside, Margarita

looked back as she rode and saw that there not only were no multicoloured

towers behind them, but the city itself had long been gone. It was as if it

had fallen through the earth — only mist and smoke were left…

CHAPTER 32. Forgiveness and Eternal Refuge

Gods, my gods! How sad the evening earth! How mysterious the mists over

the swamps! He who has wandered in these mists, he who has suffered much

before death, he who has flown over this earth bearing on himself too heavy

a burden, knows it. The weary man knows it. And without regret he leaves the

mists of the earth, its swamps and rivers, with a light heart he gives

himself into the hands of death, knowing that she alone can bring him peace.

The magical black horses also became tired and carried their riders

slowly, and ineluctable night began to overtake them. Sensing it at his

back, even the irrepressible Behemoth quieted down and, his claws sunk into

the saddle, flew silent and serious, puffing up his tail.

Night began to cover forests and fields with its black shawl, night lit

melancholy little lights somewhere far below — now no longer interesting and

necessary either for Margarita or for the master — alien lights. Night was

outdistancing the cavalcade, it sowed itself over them from above, casting

white specks of stars here and there in the saddened sky.

Night thickened, flew alongside, caught at the riders' cloaks and,

tearing them from their shoulders, exposed the deceptions. And when

Margarita, blown upon by the cool wind, opened her eyes, she saw how the

appearance of them all was changing as they flew to their goal. And when,

from beyond the edge of the forest, the crimson and full moon began rising

to meet them, all deceptions vanished, fell into the swamp, the unstable

magic garments drowned in the mists.

Hardly recognizable as Koroviev-Fagott, the self-appointed interpreter

to the mysterious consultant who needed no interpreting, was he who now flew

just beside Woland, to the right of the master’s friend. In place of him who

had left Sparrow Hills in a ragged circus costume under the name of

Koroviev-Fagott, there now rode, softly clinking the golden chains of the

bridle, a dark-violet knight with a most gloomy and never-smiling face. He

rested his chin on his chest, he did not look at the moon, he was not

interested in the earth, he was thinking something of his own, flying beside

Woland.

" Why has he changed so?' Margarita quietly asked Woland to the

whistling of the wind.

This knight once made an unfortunate joke,' replied Woland, turning his

face with its quietly burning eye to Margarita. 'The pun he thought up, in a

discussion about light and darkness, was not altogether good. And after that

the knight had to go on joking a bit more and longer than he supposed. But

this is one of the nights when accounts are settled. The knight has paid up

and closed his account.'

Night also tore off Behemoth’s fluffy tail, pulled off his fur and

scattered it in tufts over the swamps. He who had been a cat, entertaining

the prince of darkness, now turned out to be a slim youth, a demon-page, the

best jester the world has ever seen. Now he, too, grew quiet and flew

noiselessly, setting his young face towards the light that streamed from the

moon.

At the far side, the steel of his armour glittering, flew Azazello. The

moon also changed his face. The absurd, ugly fang disappeared without a

trace, and the albugo on his eye proved false. Azazello’s eyes were both the

same, empty and black, and his face was white and cold. Now Azazello flew in

his true form, as the demon of the waterless desert, the killer-demon.

Margarita could not see herself, but she saw very well how the master

had changed. His hair was now white in the moonlight and gathered behind in

a braid, and it flew on the wind. When the wind blew the cloak away from the

master’s legs, Margarita saw the stars of spurs on his jackboots, now going

out, now lighting up. Like the demon-youth, the master flew with his eyes

fixed on the moon, yet smiling to it, as to a close and beloved friend, and,

from a habit acquired in room no.118, murmuring something to himself.

And, finally, Woland also flew in his true image. Margarita could not

have said what his horse’s bridle was made of, but thought it might be

chains of moonlight, and the horse itself was a mass of darkness, and the

horse’s mane a storm cloud, and the rider’s spurs the white flecks of stars.

Thus they flew in silence for a long time, until the place itself began

to change below them. The melancholy forests drowned in earthly darkness and

drew with them the dim blades of the rivers. Boulders appeared and began to

gleam below, with black gaps between them where the moonlight did not

penetrate.

Woland reined in his horse on a stony, joyless, flat summit, and the

riders then proceeded at a walk, listening to the crunch of flint and stone

under the horses' shoes. Moonlight flooded the platform greenly and

brightly, and soon Margarita made out an armchair in this deserted place and

in it the white figure of a seated man. Possibly the seated man was deaf, or

else too sunk in his own thoughts. He did not hear the stony earth shudder

under the horses' weight, and the riders approached him without disturbing

him.

The moon helped Margarita well, it shone better than the best electric

lantern, and Margarita saw that the seated man, whose eyes seemed blind,

rubbed his hands fitfully, and peered with those same unseeing eyes at the

disc of the moon. Now Margarita saw that beside the heavy stone chair, on

which sparks glittered in the moonlight, lay a dark, huge, sharp-eared dog,

and, like its master, it gazed anxiously at the moon. Pieces of a broken jug

were scattered by the seated man’s feet and an undrying black-red puddle

spread there. The riders stopped their horses.

Your novel has been read,' Woland began, turning to the master, 'and

the only thing said about it was that, unfortunately, it is not finished.

So, then, I wanted to show you your hero. For about two thousand years he

has been sitting on this platform and sleeping, but when the full moon

comes, as you see, he is tormented by insomnia. It torments not only him,

but also his faithful guardian, the dog.

If it is true that cowardice is the most grievous vice, then the dog at

least is not guilty of it. Storms were the only thing the brave dog feared.

Well, he who loves must share the lot of the one he loves.'

`What is he saying?' asked Margarita, and her perfectly calm face

clouded over with compassion.

'He says one and the same thing,' Woland replied. `He says that even

the moon gives him no peace, and that his is a bad job. That is what he

always says when he is not asleep, and when he sleeps, he dreams one and the

same thing: there is a path of moonlight, and he wants to walk down it and

talk with the prisoner Ha-Nozri, because, as he insists, he never finished

what he was saying that time, long ago, on the fourteenth day of the spring

month of Nisan. But, alas, for some reason he never manages to get on to

this path, and no one comes to him. Then there’s no help for it, he must

talk to himself. However, one does need some diversity, and to his talk

about the moon he often adds that of all things in the world, he most hates

his immortality and his unheard-of fame. He maintains that he would

willingly exchange his lot for that of the ragged tramp Matthew Levi.'

`Twelve thousand moons for one moon long ago, isn’t that too much?'

asked Margarita.

`Repeating the story with Frieda?' said Woland. 'But don’t trouble

yourself here, Margarita. Everything will turn out right, the world is built

on that.'

'Let him go!' Margarita suddenly cried piercingly, as she had cried

once as a witch, and at this cry a stone fell somewhere in the mountains and

tumbled down the ledges into the abyss, filling the mountains with rumbling.

But Margarita could not have said whether it was the rumbling of its fall or

the rumbling of satanic laughter. In any case, Woland was laughing as he

glanced at Margarita and said:

'Don't shout in the mountains, he’s accustomed to avalanches anyway,

and it won’t rouse him. You don’t need to ask for him, Margarita, because

the one he so yearns to talk with has already asked for him.' Here Woland

turned to the master and said:

'Well, now you can finish your novel with one phrase!'

The master seemed to have been expecting this, as he stood motionless

and looked at the seated procurator. He cupped his hands to his mouth and

cried out so that the echo leaped over the unpeopled and unforested

mountains:

'You're free! You’re free! He’s waiting for you!'

The mountains turned the master’s voice to thunder, and by this same

thunder they were destroyed. The accursed rocky walls collapsed. Only the

platform with the stone armchair remained. Over the black abyss into which

the walls had gone, a boundless city lit up, dominated by gleaming idols

above a garden grown luxuriously over many thousands of moons. The path of

moonlight so long awaited by the procurator stretched right to this garden,

and the first to rush down it was the sharp-eared dog. The man in the white

cloak with blood-red lining rose from the armchair and shouted something in

a hoarse, cracked voice. It was impossible to tell whether he was weeping or

laughing, or what he shouted. It could only be seen that, following his

faithful guardian, he, too, rushed headlong down the path of moonlight.

`I'm to follow him there?' the master asked anxiously, holding the

bridle.

'No,' replied Woland, 'why run after what is already finished?'

There, then?' the master asked, turning and pointing back, where the

recently abandoned city with the gingerbread towers of its convent, with the

sun broken to smithereens in its windows, now wove itself behind them.

'Not there, either,' replied Woland, and his voice thickened and flowed

over the rocks. `Romantic master! He, whom the hero you invented and have

just set free so yearns to see, has read your novel.' Here Woland turned to

Margarita: `Margarita Nikolaevna! It is impossible not to believe that you

have tried to think up the best future for the master, but, really, what I

am offering you, and what Yeshua has asked for you, is better still! Leave

them to each other,' Woland said, leaning towards the master’s saddle from

his own, pointing to where the procurator had gone, 'let's not interfere

with them. And maybe they’ll still arrive at something.' Here Woland waved

his arm in the direction of Yershalaim, and it went out.

'And there, too,' Woland pointed behind them, 'what are you going to do

in the little basement?' Here the sun broken up in the glass went out.

'Why?' Woland went on persuasively and gently, 'oh, thrice-romantic

master, can it be that you don’t want to go strolling with your friend in

the daytime under cherry trees just coming into bloom, and in the evening

listen to Schubert’s music? Can it be that you won’t like writing with a

goose quill by candlelight? Can it be that you don’t want to sit over a

retort like Faust, in hopes that you’ll succeed in forming a new homunculus?

There! There! The house and the old servant are already waiting for you, the

candles are already burning, and soon they will go out, because you will

immediately meet the dawn. Down this path, master, this one! Farewell! It’s

time for me to go!'

'Farewell!' Margarita and the master answered Woland in one cry. Then

the black Woland, heedless of any road, threw himself into a gap, and his

retinue noisily hurried down after him. There were no rocks, no platform, no

path of moonlight, no Yershalaim around. The black steeds also vanished. The

master and Margarita saw the promised dawn. It began straight away,

immediately after the midnight moon.

The master walked with his friend in the brilliance of the first rays

of morning over a mossy little stone bridge. They crossed it. The faithful

lovers left the stream behind and walked down the sandy path.

'Listen to the stillness,' Margarita said to the master, and the sand

rustled under her bare feet, `listen and enjoy what you were not given in

life — peace. Look, there ahead is your eternal home, which you have been

given as a reward. I can already see the Venetian window and the twisting

vine, it climbs right up to the roof. Here is your home, your eternal home.

I know that in the evenings you will be visited by those you love,

those who interest you and who will never trouble you. They will play for

you, they will sing for you, you will see what light is in the room when the

candles are burning. You will fall asleep, having put on your greasy and

eternal nightcap, you will fall asleep with a smile on your lips. Sleep will

strengthen you, you will reason wisely. And you will no longer be able to

drive me away. I will watch over your sleep.'

Thus spoke Margarita, walking with the master to their eternal home,

and it seemed to the master that Margarita’s words flowed in the same way as

the stream they had left behind flowed and whispered, and the master’s

memory, the master’s anxious, needled memory began to fade. Someone was

setting the master free, as he himself had just set free the hero he had

created. This hero had gone into the abyss, gone irrevocably, the son of the

astrologer-king, forgiven on the eve of Sunday, the cruel fifth procurator

of Judea, the equestrian Pontius Pilate.

Epilogue.

But all the same — what happened later in Moscow, after that Saturday

evening when Woland left the capital, having disappeared from Sparrow Hills

at sunset with his retinue?

Of the fact that, for a long time, a dense hum of the most incredible

rumours went all over the capital and very quickly spread to remote and

forsaken provincial places as well, nothing need be said. It is even

nauseating to repeat such rumours.

The writer of these truthful lines himself, personally, on a trip to

Feodosiya, heard a story on the train about two thousand persons in Moscow

coming out of a theatre stark-naked in the literal sense of the word and in

that fashion returning home in taxi-cabs.

The whisper 'unclean powers' was heard in queues waiting at dairy

stores, in tram-cars, shops, apartments, kitchens, on trains both suburban

and long-distance, in stations big and small, at summer resorts and on

beaches.

The most developed and cultured people, to be sure, took no part in

this tale-telling about the unclean powers that had visited Moscow, even

laughed at them and tried to bring the tellers to reason. But all the same a

fact, as they say, is a fact, and to brush it aside without explanations is

simply impossible: someone had visited the capital. The nice little cinders

left over from Griboedov’s, and many other things as well, confirmed that

only too eloquently.

Cultured people adopted the view of the investigation: it had been the

work of a gang of hypnotists and ventriloquists with a superb command of

their art.

Measures for catching them, in Moscow as well as outside it, were of

course immediately and energetically taken, but, most regrettably, produced

no results. The one calling himself Woland disappeared with all his company

and neither returned to Moscow nor appeared anywhere else, and did not

manifest himself in any way. Quite naturally, the suggestion emerged that he

had fled abroad, but there, too, he gave no signs of himself.

The investigation of his case continued for a long time. Because, in

truth, it was a monstrous case! Not to mention four burned-down buildings

and hundreds of people driven mad, there had been murders. Of two this could

be said with certainty: of Berlioz, and of that ill-fated employee of the

bureau for acquainting foreigners with places of interest in Moscow, the

former Baron Meigel. They had been murdered. The charred bones of the latter

were discovered in apartment no.50 on Sadovaya Street after the fire was put

out. Yes, there were victims, and these victims called for investigation.

But there were other victims as well, even after Woland left the

capital, and these victims, sadly enough, were black cats.

Approximately a hundred of these peaceful and useful animals, devoted

to mankind, were shot or otherwise exterminated in various parts of the

country. About a dozen cats, some badly disfigured, were delivered to police

stations in various cities. For instance, in Armavir one of these perfectly

guiltless beasts was brought to the police by some citizen with its front

paws tied.

This cat had been ambushed by the citizen at the very moment when the

animal, with a thievish look (how can it be helped if cats have this look?

It is not because they are depraved, but because they are afraid lest some

beings stronger than themselves — dogs or people — cause them some harm or

offence. Both are very easy to do, but I assure you there is no credit in

doing so, no, none at all!), so, then, with a thievish look the cat was for

some reason about to dash into the burdock.

Falling upon the cat and tearing his necktie off to bind it, the

citizen muttered venomously and threateningly:

'Aha! So now you’ve been so good as to come to our Armavir, mister

hypnotist? Well, we’re not afraid of you here. Don’t pretend to be dumb! We

know what kind of goose you are!'

The citizen brought the cat to the police, dragging the poor beast by

its front paws, bound with a green necktie, giving it little kicks to make

the cat walk not otherwise than on its hind legs.

`You quit that,' cried the citizen, accompanied by whistling boys,

'quit playing the fool! It won’t do! Kindly walk like everybody else!'

The black cat only rolled its martyred eyes. Being deprived by nature

of the gift of speech, it could not vindicate itself in any way. The poor

beast owed its salvation first of all to the police, and then to its owner ;

a venerable old widow. As soon as the cat was delivered to the police

station, it was realized that the citizen smelled rather strongly of

alcohol, as a result of which his evidence was at once subject to doubt. And

the little old lady, having meanwhile learned from neighbours that her cat

had been hauled in, rushed to the station and arrived in the nick of time.

She gave the most flattering references for the cat, explained that she

had known it for five years, since it was a kitten, that she vouched for it

as for her own self, and proved that it had never been known to do anything

bad and had never been to Moscow. As it had been born in Armavir, so there

it had grown up and learned the catching of mice.

The cat was untied and returned to its owner, having tasted grief, it’s

true, and having learned by experience the meaning of error and slander.

Besides cats, some minor unpleasantnesses befell certain persons.

Detained for a short time were: in Leningrad, the citizens Wolman and

Wolper; in Saratov, Kiev and Kharkov, three Volodins; in Kazan, one Volokh;

and in Penza — this for totally unknown reasons — doctor of chemical

sciences Vetchinkevich. True, he was enormously tall, very swarthy and

dark-haired.

In various places, besides that, nine Korovins, four Korovkins and two

Karavaevs were caught.

A certain citizen was taken off the Sebastopol train and bound at the

Belgorod station. This citizen had decided to entertain his fellow

passengers with card tricks.

In Yaroslavl, a citizen came to a restaurant at lunch-time carrying a

primus which he had just picked up from being repaired. The moment they saw

him, the two doormen abandoned their posts in the coatroom and fled, and

after them fled all the restaurant’s customers and personnel. With that, in

some inexplicable fashion, the girl at the cash register had all the money

disappear on her.

There was much else, but one cannot remember everything.

Again and again justice must be done to the investigation. Every

attempt was made not only to catch the criminals, but to explain all their

mischief. And it all was explained, and these explanations cannot but be

acknowledged as sensible and irrefutable.

Representatives of the investigation and experienced psychiatrists

established that members of the criminal gang, or one of them perhaps

(suspicion fell mainly on Koroviev), were hypnotists of unprecedented power,

who could show themselves not in the place where they actually were, but in

imaginary, shifted positions. Along with that, they could freely suggest to

those they encountered that certain things or people were where they

actually were not, and, contrariwise, could remove from the field of vision

things or people that were in fact to be found within that field of vision.

In the light of such explanations, decidedly everything was clear, even

what the citizens found most troublesome, the apparently quite inexplicable

invulnerability of the cat, shot at in apartment no.50 during the attempt to

put him under arrest.

There had been no cat on the chandelier, naturally, nor had anyone even

thought of returning their fire, the shooters had been aiming at an empty

spot, while Koroviev, having suggested that the cat was acting up on the

chandelier, was free to stand behind the shooters' backs, mugging and

enjoying his enormous, albeit criminally employed, capacity for suggestion.

It was he, of course, who had set fire to the apartment by spilling the

benzene.

Styopa Likhodeev had, of course, never gone to any Yalta (such a stunt

was beyond even Koroviev’s powers), nor had he sent any telegrams from

there. After fainting in the jeweller’s wife’s apartment, frightened by a

trick of Koroviev’s, who had shown him a cat holding a pickled mushroom on a

fork, he lay there until Koroviev, jeering at him, capped him with a shaggy

felt hat and sent him to the Moscow airport, having first suggested to the

representatives of the investigation who went to meet Styopa that Styopa

would be getting off the plane from Sebastopol.

True, the criminal investigation department in Yalta maintained that

they had received the barefoot Styopa, and had sent telegrams concerning

Styopa to Moscow, but no copies of these telegrams were found in the files,

from which the sad but absolutely invincible conclusion was drawn that the

hypnotizing gang was able to hypnotize at an enormous distance, and not only

individual persons but even whole groups of them.

Under these circumstances, the criminals were able to drive people of

the sturdiest psychic make-up out of their minds. To say nothing of such

trifles as the pack of cards in the pocket of someone in the stalls, the

women’s disappearing dresses, or the miaowing beret, or other things of that

sort! Such stunts can be pulled by any professional hypnotist of average

ability on any stage, including the uncomplicated trick of tearing the head

off the master of ceremonies. The talking cat was also sheer nonsense. To

present people with such a cat, it is enough to have a command of the basic

principles of ventriloquism, and scarcely anyone will doubt that Koroviev’s

art went significantly beyond those principles.

Yes, the point here lay not at all in packs of cards, or the false

letters in Nikanor Ivanovich’s briefcase! These were all trifles! It was he,

Koroviev, who had sent Berlioz to certain death under the tram-car. It was

he who had driven the poor poet Ivan Homeless crazy, he who had made him

have visions, see ancient Yershalaim in tormenting dreams, and sun-scorched,

waterless Bald Mountain with three men hanging on posts. It was he and his

gang who had made Margarita Nikolaevna and her housekeeper Natasha disappear

from Moscow. Incidentally, the investigation considered this matter with

special attention. It had to find out if the two women had been abducted by

the gang of murderers and arsonists or had fled voluntarily with the

criminal company. On the basis of the absurd and incoherent evidence of

Nikolai Ivanovich, and considering the strange and insane note Margarita

Nikolaevna had left for her husband, the note in which she wrote that she

had gone off to become a witch, as well as the circumstance that Natasha had

disappeared leaving all her clothes behind, the investigation concluded that

both mistress and housekeeper, like many others, had been hypnotized, and

had thus been abducted by the band. There also emerged the probably quite

correct thought that the criminals had been attracted by the beauty of the

two women.

Yet what remained completely unclear to the investigation was the

gang’s motive in abducting the mental patient who called himself the master

from the psychiatric clinic. This they never succeeded in establishing, nor

did they succeed in obtaining the abducted man’s last name. Thus he vanished

for ever under the dead alias of number one-eighteen from the first

building.

And so, almost everything was explained, and the investigation came to

an end, as everything generally comes to an end.

Several years passed, and the citizens began to forget Woland, Koroviev

and the rest. Many changes took place in the lives of those who suffered

from Woland and his company, and however trifling and insignificant those

changes are, they still ought to be noted.

Georges Bengalsky, for instance, after spending three months in the

clinic, recovered and left it, but had to give up his work at the Variety,

and that at the hottest time, when the public was flocking after tickets:

the memory of black magic and its exposure proved very tenacious.

Bengalsky left the Variety, for he understood that to appear every

night before two thousand people, to be inevitably recognized and endlessly

subjected to jeering questions of how he liked it better, with or without

his head, was much too painful.

And, besides that, the master of ceremonies had lost a considerable

dose of his gaiety, which is so necessary in his profession. He remained

with the unpleasant, burdensome habit of falling, every spring during the

full moon, into a state of anxiety, suddenly clutching his neck, looking

around fearfully and weeping. These fits would pass, but all the same, since

he had them, he could not continue in his former occupation, and so the

master of ceremonies retired and started living on his savings, which, by

his modest reckoning, were enough to last him fifteen years.

He left and never again met Varenukha, who has gained universal

popularity and affection by his responsiveness and politeness, incredible

even among theatre administrators. The free-pass seekers, for instance,

never refer to him otherwise than as father-benefactor. One can call the

Variety at any time and always hear in the receiver a soft but sad voice:

`May I help you?' And to the request that Varenukha be called to the

phone, the same voice hastens to answer: 'At your service.' And, oh, how

Ivan Savelyevich has suffered from his own politeness!

Styopa Likhodeev was to talk no more over the phone at the Variety.

Immediately after his release from the clinic, where he spent eight days,

Styopa was transferred to Rostov, taking up the position of manager of a

large food store. Rumour has it that he has stopped drinking cheap wine

altogether and drinks only vodka with blackcurrant buds, which has greatly

improved his health. They say he has become taciturn and keeps away from

women.

The removal of Stepan Bogdanovich from the Variety did not bring Rimsky

the joy of which he had been so greedily dreaming over the past several

years. After the clinic and Kislovodsk, old, old as could be, his head

wagging, the findirector submitted a request to be dismissed from the

Variety. The interesting thing was that this request was brought to the

Variety by Rimsky’s wife. Grigory Danilovich himself found it beyond his

strength to visit, even during the daytime, the building where he had seen

the cracked window-pane flooded with moonlight and the long arm making its

way to the lower latch.

Having left the Variety, the findirector took a job with a children’s

marionette theatre in Zamoskvorechye. In this theatre he no longer had to

run into the much-esteemed Arkady Apollonovich Semplevarov on matters of

acoustics. The latter had been promptly transferred to Briansk and appointed

manager of a mushroom cannery. The Muscovites now eat salted and pickled

mushrooms and cannot praise them enough, and they rejoice exceedingly over

this transfer. Since it is a bygone thing, we may now say that Arkady

Apollonovich’s relations with acoustics never worked out very well, and as

they had been, so they remained, no matter how he tried to improve them.

Among persons who have broken with the theatre, apart from Arkady

Apollonovich, mention should be made of Nikanor Ivanovich Bosoy, though he

had been connected with the theatre in no other way than by his love for

free tickets. Nikanor Ivanovich not only goes to no sort of theatre, either

paying or free, but even changes countenance at any theatrical conversation.

Besides the theatre, he has come to hate, not to a lesser but to a

still greater degree, the poet Pushkin and the talented actor Sawa

Potapovich Kurolesov. The latter to such a degree that last year, seeing a

black-framed announcement in the newspaper that Sawa Potapovich had suffered

a stroke in the full bloom of his career, Nikanor Ivanovich turned so purple

that he almost followed after Sawa Potapovich, and bellowed: `Serves him

right!'

Moreover, that same evening Nikanor Ivanovich, in whom the death of the

popular actor had evoked a great many painful memories, alone, in the sole

company of the full moon shining on Sadovaya, got terribly drunk. And with

each drink, the cursed line of hateful figures got longer, and in this line

were Dunchil, Sergei Gerardovich, and the beautiful Ida Herculanovna, and

that red-haired owner of fighting geese, and the candid Kanavkin, Nikolai.

Well, and what on earth happened to them? Good heavens! Precisely

nothing happened to them, or could happen, since they never actually

existed, as that affable artiste, the master of ceremonies, never existed,

nor the theatre itself, nor that old pinchfist of an aunt Porokhovnikova,

who kept currency rotting in the cellar, and there certainly were no golden

trumpets or impudent cooks. All this Nikanor Ivanovich merely dreamed under

the influence of the nasty Koroviev. The only living person to fly into this

dream was precisely Sawa Potapovich, the actor, and he got mixed up in it

only because he was ingrained in Nikanor Ivanovich’s memory owing to his

frequent performances on the radio. He existed, but the rest did not.

So, maybe Aloisy Mogarych did not exist either? Oh, no! He not only

existed, but he exists even now and precisely in the post given up by

Rimsky, that is, the post of findirector of the Variety.

Coming to his senses about twenty-four hours after his visit to Woland,

on a train somewhere near Vyatka, Aloisy realized that, having for some

reason left Moscow in a darkened state of mind, he had forgotten to put on

his trousers, but instead had stolen, with an unknown purpose, the

completely useless household register of the builder. Paying a colossal sum

of money to the conductor, Aloisy acquired from him an old and greasy pair

of pants, and in Vyatka he turned back. But, alas, he did not find the

builder’s little house. The decrepit trash had been licked clean away by a

fire. But Aloisy was an extremely enterprising man. Two weeks later he was

living in a splendid room on Briusovsky Lane, and a few months later he was

sitting in Rimsky’s office. And as Rimsky had once suffered because of

Styopa, so now Varenukha was tormented because of Aloisy. Ivan Savelyevich’s

only dream is that this Aloisy should be removed somewhere out of sight,

because, as Varenukha sometimes whispers in intimate company, he supposedly

has never in his life met 'such scum as this Aloisy', and he supposedly

expects anything you like from this Aloisy.

However, the administrator is perhaps prejudiced. Aloisy has not been

known for any shady business, or for any business at all, unless of course

we count his appointing someone else to replace the barman Sokov. For Andrei

Fokich died of liver cancer in the clinic of the First MSU some ten months

after Woland’s appearance in Moscow.

Yes, several years have passed, and the events truthfully described in

this book have healed over and faded from memory. But not for everyone, not

for everyone.

Each year, with the festal spring full moon,' a man of about thirty or

thirty-odd appears towards evening under the lindens at the Patriarch’s

Ponds. A reddish-haired, green-eyed, modestly dressed man. He is a

researcher at the Institute of History and Philosophy, Professor Ivan

Nikolaevich Ponyrev.

Coming under the lindens, he always sits down on the same bench on

which he sat that evening when Berlioz, long forgotten by all, saw the moon

breaking to pieces for the last time in his life. Whole now, white at the

start of the evening, then gold with a dark horse-dragon, it floats over the

former poet Ivan Nikolaevich and at the same time stays in place at its

height.

Ivan Nikolaevich is aware of everything, he knows and understands

everything. He knows that as a young man he fell victim to criminal

hypnotists and was afterwards treated and cured. But he also knows that

there are things he cannot manage. He cannot manage this spring full moon.

As soon as it begins to approach, as soon as the luminary that once

hung higher than the two five-branched candlesticks begins to swell and fill

with gold, Ivan Nikolaevich becomes anxious, nervous, he loses appetite and

sleep, waiting till the moon ripens. And when the full moon comes, nothing

can keep Ivan Nikolaevich at home. Towards evening he goes out and walks to

the Patriarch’s Ponds.

Sitting on the bench, Ivan Nikolaevich openly talks to himself, smokes,

squints now at the moon, now at the memorable turnstile.

Ivan Nikolaevich spends an hour or two like this. Then he leaves his

place and, always following the same itinerary, goes with empty and unseeing

eyes through Spiridonovka to the lanes of the Arbat.

He passes the kerosene shop, turns by a lopsided old gaslight, and

steals up to a fence, behind which he sees a luxuriant, though as yet

unclothed, garden, and in it a Gothic mansion, moon-washed on the side with

the triple bay window and dark on the other.

The professor does not know what draws him to the fence or who lives in

the mansion, but he does know that there is no fighting with himself on the

night of the full moon. Besides, he knows that he will inevitably see one

and the same thing in the garden behind the fence.

He will see an elderly and respectable man with a little beard, wearing

a pince-nez, and with slightly piggish features, sitting on a bench. Ivan

Nikolaevich always finds this resident of the mansion in one and the same

dreamy pose, his eyes turned towards the moon. It is known to Ivan

Nikolaevich that, after admiring the moon, the seated man will unfailingly

turn his gaze to the bay windows and fix it on them, as if expecting that

they would presently be flung open and something extraordinary would appear

on the window-sill. The whole sequel Ivan Nikolaevich knows by heart. Here

he must bury himself deeper behind the fence, for presently the seated man

will begin to turn his head restlessly, to snatch at something in the air

with a wandering gaze, to smile rapturously, and then he will suddenly clasp

his hands in a sort of sweet anguish, and then he will murmur simply and

rather loudly:

'Venus! Venus! … Ah, fool that I am! …'

'Gods, gods!' Ivan Nikolaevich will begin to whisper, hiding behind the

fence and never taking his kindling eyes off the mysterious stranger. 'Here

is one more of the moon’s victims … Yes, one more victim, like me…'

And the seated man will go on talking:

'Ah, fool that I am! Why, why didn’t I fly off with her? What were you

afraid of, old ass? Got yourself a certificate! Ah, suffer now, you old

cretin! …'

It will go on like this until a window in the dark part of the mansion

bangs, something whitish appears in it, and an unpleasant female voice rings

out:

'Nikolai Ivanovich, where are you? What is this fantasy? Want to catch

malaria? Come and have tea!'

Here, of course, the seated man will recover his senses and reply in a

lying voice:

'I wanted a breath of air, a breath of air, dearest! The air is so

nice! …'

And here he will get up from the bench, shake his fist on the sly at

the closing ground-floor window, and trudge back to the house.

'Lying, he’s lying! Oh, gods, how he’s lying!' Ivan Nikolaevich mutters

as he leaves the fence. 'It's not the air that draws him to the garden, he

sees something at the time of this spring full moon, in the garden, up

there! Ah, I’d pay dearly to penetrate his mystery, to know who this Venus

is that he’s lost and now fruitlessly feels for in the air, trying to catch

her! …'

And the professor returns home completely ill. His wife pretends not to

notice his condition and urges him to go to bed. But she herself does not go

to bed and sits by the lamp with a book, looking with grieving eyes at the

sleeper. She knows that Ivan Nikolaevich will wake up at dawn with a painful

cry, will begin to weep and thrash. Therefore there lies before her,

prepared ahead of time, on the tablecloth, under the lamp, a syringe in

alcohol and an ampoule of liquid the colour of dark tea.

The poor woman, tied to a gravely ill man, is now free and can sleep

without apprehensions. After the injection, Ivan Nikolaevich will sleep till

morning with a blissful face, having sublime and blissful dreams unknown to

her.

It is always one and the same thing that awakens the scholar and draws

pitiful cries from him on the night of the full moon. He sees some

unnatural, noseless executioner who, leaping up and hooting somehow with his

voice, sticks his spear into the heart of Gestas, who is tied to a post and

has gone insane. But it is not the executioner who is frightening so much as

the unnatural lighting in this dream, caused by some dark cloud boiling and

heaving itself upon the earth, as happens only during world catastrophes.

After the injection, everything changes before the sleeping man. A

broad path of moonlight stretches from his bed to the window, and a man in a

white cloak with blood-red lining gets on to this path and begins to walk

towards the moon. Beside him walks a young man in a torn chiton and with a

disfigured face. The walkers talk heatedly about something, they argue, they

want to reach some understanding.

'Gods, gods!' says that man in the cloak, turning his haughty face to

his companion. `Such a banal execution! But, please,' here the face turns

from haughty to imploring, `tell me it never happened! I implore you, tell

me, it never happened?'

'Well, of course it never happened,' his companion replies in a hoarse

voice, 'you imagined it.'

'And you can swear it to me?' the man in the cloak asks ingratiatingly.

`I swear it!' replies his companion, and his eyes smile for some

reason.

'I need nothing more!' the man in the cloak exclaims in a husky voice

and goes ever higher towards the moon, drawing his companion along. Behind

them a gigantic, sharp-eared dog walks calmly and majestically.

Then the moonbeam boils up, a river of moonlight begins to gush from it

and pours out in all directions. The moon rules and plays, the moon dances

and frolics. Then a woman of boundless beauty forms herself in the stream,

and by the hand she leads out to Ivan a man overgrown with beard who glances

around fearfully. Ivan Nikolaevich recognizes him at once. It is number

one-eighteen, his nocturnal guest. In his dream Ivan Nikolaevich reaches his

arms out to him and asks greedily:

'So it ended with that?'

'It ended with that, my disciple,' answers number one-eighteen, and

then the woman comes up to Ivan and says:

'Of course, with that. Everything has ended, and everything ends… And

I will kiss you on the forehead, and everything with you will be as it

should be …'

She bends over Ivan and kisses him on the forehead, and Ivan reaches

out to her and peers into her eyes, but she retreats, retreats, and together

with her companion goes towards the moon…

Then the moon begins to rage, it pours streams of light down right on

Ivan, it sprays light in all directions, a flood of moonlight engulfs the

room, the light heaves, rises higher, drowns the bed. It is then that Ivan

Nikolaevich sleeps with a blissful face.

The next morning he wakes up silent but perfecdy calm and well. His

needled memory grows quiet, and until the next full moon no one will trouble

the professor — neither the noseless killer of Gestas, nor the cruel fifth

procurator of Judea, the equestrian Pontius Pilate.

[1928—1940]