Part Two

19. Margarita

Follow me, reader! Who told you there is no genuine, true, everlasting love in the world? Let the liar’s vile tongue be cut off!

Follow me, my Reader, and only me, and I shall show you such love!

No! The Master was mistaken in the hospital when he told Ivanushka with bitterness at that hour when the night was slipping past midnight that she had forgotten him. That could not have been. Of course she had not forgotten him.

First of all we shall reveal the secret which the Master did not wish to reveal to Ivanushka. His beloved was called Margarita Nikolayevna. All the Master said about her to the poor poet was the absolute truth. He described his beloved accurately. She was beautiful and clever. To this must be added one more thing: it can be said with certainty that many women would have given absolutely anything to exchange their lives for the life of Margarita Nikolayevna. Thirty years old and childless, Margarita was the wife of a very major specialist, who had, in addition, made a most important discovery of national significance. Her husband was young, handsome, kind, honest, and adored his wife. Margarita Nikolayevna and her husband together occupied the entire upper part of a splendid detached house, set in a garden in one of the side streets near the Arbat. An enchanting place! Anyone can satisfy himself of it, should he desire to head into that garden. Let him ask me, I’ll tell him the address, I’ll point out the way – the house is still intact to this day.

Margarita Nikolayevna was not in need of money. Margarita Nikolayevna could buy anything she liked. Among her husband’s acquaintances there were some interesting people. Margarita Nikolayevna never touched a Primus stove. Margarita Nikolayevna did not know the horrors of living in a shared apartment. In short… was she happy? Not for one minute! Ever since she had married as a nineteen-year-old and found herself in the detached house, she had not known happiness. Gods, my gods! Whatever did this woman need?! What did she need, this woman in whose eyes there always burned some incomprehensible little fire? What did she need, this witch with a slight squint in one eye who adorned herself that time in spring with mimosas? I don’t know. It’s unknown to me. Obviously she was telling the truth, she needed him, the Master, and not by any means a Gothic house, nor a private garden, nor money. She loved him, she was telling the truth.

Even I, the truthful narrator, but an outside observer, feel my heart contract at the thought of what Margarita experienced when she arrived the next day at the Master’s little house – fortunately, without having managed to talk things over with her husband, who had not returned at the appointed time – and learnt that the Master was no longer there. She did everything to find something out about him, and, of course, she found out precisely nothing. Then she returned to her house and began living in her former place.

But as soon as the dirty snow disappeared from the pavements and the roadways, as soon as there was a breath of the rather muggy, restless wind of spring through the transom windows, Margarita Nikolayevna began pining more than in the winter. She often cried in secret, crying long and bitterly. She did not know whom she loved: someone alive or dead. And the longer the desperate days went on, the more often the thought came to her, and particularly in the twilight, that she was tied to someone who was dead.

She either had to forget him or die herself. Such a life just can’t be dragged out. It can’t! Forget him, whatever the cost – forget him! But he won’t be forgotten, that’s the trouble.

“Yes, yes, yes, the same sort of mistake!” said Margarita, sitting by the stove and gazing at the fire, lit in memory of the fire that had used to burn then, when he had been writing Pontius Pilate. “Why did I leave him then, in the night? Why? It’s madness, isn’t it? I was honest, I returned the next day, as I’d promised, but it was already too late. Yes, like the unhappy Levi Matthew, I returned too late!”

All these words were, of course, absurd, because what would in fact have changed if she had remained that night with the Master? Would she really have saved him? Ridiculous! we would exclaim, but we won’t do that in front of a woman reduced to despair.

That same day when all sorts of absurd commotion was taking place, brought about by the appearance in Moscow of the black magician, on the Friday when Berlioz’s uncle was banished back to Kiev, when the accountant was arrested and a multitude of other very silly and incomprehensible things took place too, Margarita woke up around midday in her bedroom, which looked out through the skylight onto the house’s turret.

On waking up, Margarita did not start crying, as was often the case, because she had woken up with a premonition that that day something finally was going to happen. Having had this premonition, she began warming and nurturing it in her soul, afraid that it might abandon her.

“I believe it!” whispered Margarita solemnly. “I believe it! Something is going to happen! It can’t fail to happen, because why, after all, have I been sent a lifetime of torment? I admit the fact that I lied and deceived and lived a secret life, hidden from the world, but all the same, that cannot be punished so cruelly. Something is bound to happen, because it cannot be that something drags on for ever. And besides, my dream was a prophetic one, I guarantee it.”

Thus whispered Margarita Nikolayevna, gazing at the crimson, sun-drenched curtains, dressing uneasily, combing her short, waved hair in front of the triple mirror.

The dream that Margarita had dreamt that night really was unusual. The thing is that during her winter torment she had never seen the Master in her dreams. He would leave her alone in the night, and she was tormented only in the hours of daylight. But now she had dreamt of him.

Margarita had dreamt of a place unknown to her – hopeless, dreary, beneath an overcast early spring sky. She dreamt of this scraggy, racing grey sky, with beneath it a soundless flock of rooks. Some rough little bridge, beneath it a turbid spring rivulet. Joyless, wretched, half-bare trees. A solitary aspen and, further off, between the trees, beyond some sort of vegetable patch, a little log cabin, perhaps a detached cookhouse, perhaps a bathhouse, perhaps the devil knows what. All around is somehow lifeless, and so dreary that there is a real urge to hang oneself on that aspen by the bridge. Not a breath of breeze, not a cloud stirring and not a living soul. What a hellish spot for a living person!

And then, imagine, the door of the log cabin swings wide open, and he appears. Quite far off, but distinctly visible. He is ragged; what he is wearing cannot be made out. Hair tousled, unshaven. The eyes sick, alarmed. He is beckoning to her with his hand, calling. Choking in the lifeless air, Margarita had set off running over the hummocks towards him, and at that moment had woken up.

“That dream can signify only one of two things,” Margarita Nikolayevna reasoned to herself. “If he’s dead and beckoned to me, that means he was coming for me, and I shall soon die. That’s a very good thing, because then there’ll be an end to my torment. Or he’s alive, and then the dream can signify only one thing, that he’s giving me a reminder of himself! He wants to say we shall see one another again. Yes, we shall see one another very soon!”

Still in the same excited state, Margarita got dressed and began telling herself that, in essence, everything was working out very well, and you needed to know how to seize such opportune moments and exploit them. Her husband had gone away on a business trip for three whole days. She had been left to her own devices for a period of three days, nobody would prevent her from thinking about anything she wanted, dreaming about whatever she pleased. All five rooms on the top floor of the house – this whole apartment, which would have been the envy of tens of thousands of people in Moscow, was completely at her disposal.

However, having got freedom for three whole days, the place Margarita chose out of the whole of this luxurious apartment was far from the best. After drinking her fill of tea, she went off to a dark room without windows, where suitcases and various old things were kept in two large cupboards. Squatting down, she opened the bottom drawer of the first of them, and from under a heap of scraps of silk she got out the only thing of value she had in life. In Margarita’s hands was an old, brown leather album, in which there was a photograph of the Master, a Savings Bank book with a deposit of 10,000 in his name, the petals of a dried rose pressed between sheets of ricepaper and part of a notebook a whole quire in length, covered in typewriting and with its bottom edge scorched.

Returning with these riches to her bedroom, Margarita Nikolayevna set the photograph up on the triple mirror and sat for about an hour, holding the fire-damaged notebook on her knees, leafing through it and rereading what, after the burning, had neither beginning nor end: "… The darkness that had come from the Mediterranean Sea covered the city the Procurator hated. The suspension bridges joining the Temple to the terrible Tower of Antonia disappeared; the abyss descended from the sky and poured over the winged gods above the hippodrome; the Hasmonean Palace with its embrasures, the bazaars, the caravanserais, the lanes, the ponds. Yershalaim, the great city, vanished as if it had never existed on the earth.”

Margarita wanted to read further, but there was nothing further except an uneven, charred fringe.

Wiping away her tears, Margarita Nikolayevna finished with the notebook, put her elbows on the dressing table and sat for a long time, reflected in the mirror, never taking her eyes off the photograph. Then her tears dried. Margarita collected her belongings neatly together, and a few minutes later they were buried once again beneath the bits of silk, and the lock closed with a clang in the dark room.

Margarita Nikolayevna was in the hall, putting on her coat to go out for a walk. Her beautiful maid Natasha enquired about what she should do for the main course and, getting the reply that it made no difference, to amuse herself she entered into conversation with her mistress and began telling her God knows what, such as how at the theatre the day before a conjuror had performed such tricks that everyone had gasped – he had given out for free to everyone two flacons of foreign perfume each, and stockings for free, and then, when the performance had ended, the audience had gone out into the street and – hey presto! – everyone had turned out to be naked! Margarita Nikolayevna toppled onto the chair under the mirror in the hall and roared with laughter.

“Natasha! You should be ashamed of yourself,” said Margarita Nikolayevna, “you’re a literate, intelligent girl; people in queues tell the devil knows what lies, and you go repeating them!”

Natasha flushed red and objected with great fervour that they weren’t lying one bit and that she herself had personally seen in a grocer’s on the Arbat that day a citizeness who had come into the shop wearing shoes, but when she had gone to the till to pay, her shoes had disappeared from her feet and she had been left in just her stockings. Eyes popping out and a hole in the heel! And those shoes had been magic ones from that same performance.

“And she left like that?”

“She left like that!” Natasha cried out, blushing more and more at not being believed. “And yesterday, Margarita Nikolayevna, the police took in about a hundred people during the night. Citizenesses from this show were running down Tverskaya in just their knickers.”

“Well, it was Darya telling you, of course,” said Margarita Nikolayevna, “I’ve been noticing for a long time now that she’s a dreadful liar.”

The funny conversation ended with a pleasant surprise for Natasha. Margarita Nikolayevna went into the bedroom and came out of it holding in her hands a pair of stockings and a flacon of eau de Cologne. Telling Natasha that she wanted to perform a trick as well, Margarita Nikolayevna presented her with both the stockings and the bottle and said that she asked only one thing of her – not to run down Tverskaya in just the stockings, and not to listen to Darya. After exchanging kisses, the mistress and the maid parted.

Reclining against the comfortable soft back of a seat in a trolleybus, Margarita Nikolayevna rode down the Arbat, at times deep in her own thoughts, at times listening in on what the two citizens sitting in front of her were whispering.

And they, occasionally turning around warily in case somebody might hear, were whispering to one another about some sort of nonsense. The hefty, meaty one with lively little piggy eyes sitting by the window was quietly telling his small neighbour about how a coffin had had to be covered with a black bedspread…

"It’s not possible!” whispered the small one in shock. “That’s unheard of. And what ever action did Zheldybin take?”

Amid the steady drone of the trolleybus the words could be heard from the window:

"The CID. a scandal. well, simply mysticism!”

From these fragmentary little pieces Margarita Nikolayevna somehow put together something coherent. The citizens were whispering about how some dead man – but who, they had not said – had that morning had his head stolen from his coffin! And so it was because of that that this Zheldybin was now so anxious. And the two that were whispering in the trolleybus were also linked in some way with the dead man who had been robbed.

"Will we have time to pop in for some flowers?” the small one was worrying. "You say the cremation’s at two?”

Finally Margarita Nikolayevna grew tired of listening to this mysterious prattling about a head stolen from a coffin, and she rejoiced that it was time for her to get off.

A few minutes later Margarita Nikolayevna was already sitting on one of the benches beneath the Kremlin wall, and had positioned herself in such a way that the Manege could be seen.

Margarita was squinting in the bright sunlight, remembering that night’s dream, remembering how exactly a year ago, to the day and to the hour, she had sat beside him on this very same bench. He was not there next to her today, but Margarita Nikolayevna was still conversing with him in her mind. “If you’ve been exiled, then why on earth don’t you let me know about you? After all, people do let others know. Have you stopped loving me? No, I don’t believe that somehow. So that means you were exiled and have died… Then let me go, I beg of you, give me the freedom to live at last, to breathe in the air!” Margarita Nikolayevna replied to herself on his behalf: “You are free. Am I really holding you back?” Then she objected to him: “No, what sort of answer is that? No, you get on out of my memory, then I shall be free.”

People were walking past Margarita Nikolayevna. A man gave the well-dressed woman a sidelong glance, attracted by her beauty and solitude. He coughed and sat down on the very end of that same bench on which Margarita Nikolayevna was sitting. Plucking up courage, he began to speak.

“Decidedly good weather today.”

But Margarita gave him such a gloomy look that he rose and left.

“And there’s an example,” said Margarita mentally to the one who possessed her, “why, precisely, did I drive that man off? I’m bored, and there’s nothing wrong with that Lovelace, except perhaps for just that silly ‘decidedly’. Why am I sitting alone beneath the wall like an owl? Why am I excluded from life?”

She became quite sad and downcast. But suddenly at this point that same wave of expectation and excitement from the morning hit her in the chest. “Yes, it is going to happen!” The wave hit her a second time, and at this point she realized it was a sound wave. More and more distinctly through the noise of the city could be heard the approaching beats of a drum and the sounds of trumpets, a little out of tune.

First to appear was a mounted policeman riding at a walk past the railings of the park with three men on foot behind him. Then a truck driving slowly and carrying musicians. And next – a slow-moving, brand-new open funeral car, upon it a coffin, covered in wreaths, and, at the corners of the platform, four people standing: three men and one woman.

Even at a distance Margarita discerned that the faces of the people standing in the funeral car and accompanying the deceased on his last journey were somehow strangely perplexed. This was particularly noticeable in respect of the citizeness standing at the left rear corner of the motor-hearse. It was as if this citizeness’s fat cheeks were being blown still wider apart from within by some piquant secret, and in her small, puffy eyes ambiguous little lights were sparkling. It seemed that at any minute, just a little longer, and the citizeness, unable to stand it, would wink at the deceased and say: “Have you ever seen anything like it? It’s simply mysticism!” The mourners on foot had just the same perplexed faces too, as, approximately three hundred in number, they walked slowly behind the funeral car.

Margarita’s eyes followed the procession, and she listened to the doleful bass drum producing that same repeated “boom boom boom” as it faded into the distance, and she thought: “What a strange funeral! And how depressing that ‘boom’ is! Oh, I’d truly pawn my soul to the Devil just to find out if he’s alive or not! I wonder who that is they’re burying with such extraordinary faces?”

“Berlioz, Mikhail Alexandrovich,” a somewhat nasal male voice was heard beside her, “the Chairman of MASSOLIT.”

Surprised, Margarita Nikolayevna turned and saw sitting on her bench a citizen who had evidently joined her noiselessly at the time when Margarita had been engrossed in looking at the procession and, it must be assumed, had absent-mindedly asked her last question out loud.

The procession had in the mean time started coming to a halt, probably held up by traffic lights ahead.

“Yes,” the unknown citizen continued, “they’re in an extraordinary mood. Carrying the deceased, but thinking only about where his head’s got to.”

“What head?” asked Margarita, peering at her unexpected neighbour. This neighbour turned out to be small in stature, with fiery red hair and a fang, wearing starched linen, a striped suit of good quality, patent-leather shoes and with a bowler hat on his head. His tie was bright. The surprising thing was that, sticking out of the pocket where men usually carry a handkerchief or a fountain pen, this citizen had a picked chicken bone.

“Yes, if you’d be so kind as to see,” the red-headed man explained, “this morning in the Griboyedov hall the deceased man’s head was pinched from the coffin.”

“How can that possibly be?” asked Margarita involuntarily, at the same time remembering the whispering in the trolleybus.

“The devil knows how!” replied the red-headed man casually. “Though I suggest it wouldn’t be a bad idea to ask Behemoth about it. The way it was nicked was awfully clever. Such a huge scandal! And the main thing is, it’s not clear who needs it, the head, or what for!”

No matter how preoccupied Margarita Nikolayevna was with her own business, she was nonetheless struck by the strange gibberish of the unknown citizen.

"Permit me!” she suddenly exclaimed. “What Berlioz? Is this what was in the papers today…”

“Of course, of course…”

“So those are writers following the coffin, then?” Margarita asked, suddenly baring her teeth.

“Well, naturally, they are!”

“And do you know them to look at?”

“To the very last one,” replied the red-headed man.

“Tell me,” began Margarita, and her voice became muffled, “is the critic Latunsky among them?”

“How can he possibly fail to be there?” replied the red-headed man. “There he is, on the end of the fourth row.”

“Is that the blond one?” asked Margarita, narrowing her eyes.

“Ash-grey hair. See, he’s raised his eyes skywards.”

“Looks like a Catholic priest?”

“That’s him!”

Margarita asked no more, peering at Latunsky.

'And you, as I see,” began the red-headed man, smiling, “hate this Latunsky.”

“I hate someone else as well,” Margarita replied through her teeth, “but talking about it is of no interest.”

At this time the procession moved on, and stretched out behind those on foot were for the most part empty cars.

“Well, of course, what is there of interest here, Margarita Nikolayevna!”

Margarita was surprised:

“You know me?”

Instead of a reply, the red-headed man removed his bowler hat and took it in his outstretched hand.

“A real villain’s face!” thought Margarita, scrutinizing her interlocutor of the street.

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

“How on earth would you know me? But at the same time, I’m sent to you on a little business matter.”

Margarita turned pale and recoiled.

“You should have started with that straight away,” she began, “without spinning the devil knows what kind of story about a severed head! Do you want to arrest me?”

“Nothing of the kind,” exclaimed the red-headed man. “What’s that about: he’s started talking, so there’s bound to be an arrest! Simply I have some business with you.”

“I don’t understand a thing, what business?”

The red-headed man glanced around and said mysteriously:

“I was sent to invite you to pay a call this evening.”

“What are you rambling on about, what call?”

“On a very distinguished foreigner,” said the red-headed man meaningfully, screwing up his eye.

Margarita grew very angry.

“A new breed’s appeared: the street pimp!” she said, rising to leave.

“Thank you very much for errands like this!” the red-headed man exclaimed, offended, and growled at Margarita’s departing back: “Idiot!”

“Swine!” she responded, turning around, and straight away she heard behind her the red-headed man’s voice:

“‘The darkness that had come from the Mediterranean Sea covered the city the Procurator hated. The suspension bridges joining the Temple to the terrible Tower of Antonia disappeared; the abyss descended from the sky and poured over the winged gods above the hippodrome; the Hasmonean Palace with its embrasures, the bazaars, the caravanserais, the lanes, the ponds… Yershalaim, the great city, vanished as if it had never existed on the earth.’ So just get lost with your scorched notebook and dried rose! Sit here alone on the bench and implore him to let you go free, to let you breathe the air, to get out of your memory!”

White-faced, Margarita returned to the bench. The red-headed man gazed at her with narrowed eyes.

“I don’t understand a thing,” Margarita Nikolayevna began quietly. "It’s just about possible to find out about the sheets of paper. to get in, spy. Natasha’s been bribed, yes? But how could you have found out my thoughts?” She pulled a face with an air of suffering and added: “Tell me, who are you? What organization are you from?”

“How boring this is,” the red-headed man grumbled, then began to speak louder: “Forgive me, I mean, I told you I’m not from any organization at all. Sit down, please.”

Margarita obeyed unquestioningly, but, sitting down, all the same asked again:

"Who are you?”

“Well, all right, I’m called Azazello, but that doesn’t mean anything to you anyway, does it?”

"And will you tell me how you found out about the sheets of paper and about my thoughts?”

"I won’t,” replied Azazello drily.

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

"Well, let’s say I do.”

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

“Oh, he’s alive, he’s alive,” Azazello responded unwillingly.

“God!”

“Please, no commotion or crying out,” said Azazello, frowning.

“Forgive me, forgive me,” mumbled the now submissive Margarita. “I got angry with you, of course. But you must agree, when a woman’s invited in the street to pay a call somewhere… I have no prejudices, I assure you” – Margarita grinned cheerlessly – “but I never see any foreigners, I have no desire whatsoever to associate with them. and apart from that, my husband. My tragedy is that I live with a man I don’t love, but I consider ruining his life an unworthy thing. I’ve seen nothing from him but kindness…”

Azazello heard out this incoherent speech with evident boredom.

“Can I ask you to be quiet for a minute?”

Margarita submissively fell quiet.

“I’m inviting you to see a perfectly harmless foreigner. And not a single soul will know about the visit. Now I can vouch to you for that.”

“And what does he want me for?” Margarita asked, cautiously.

“You’ll find out about that later.”

“I understand. I have to give myself to him,” Margarita said pensively.

At this Azazello snorted in a haughty sort of way and replied thus:

“That would be the dream, I can assure you, of any woman in the world” – a chuckle distorted Azazello’s ugly mug – “but I’ll have to disappoint you, it won’t happen.”

“What sort of a foreigner is this?!” Margarita exclaimed so loudly in her confusion that people walking past the bench turned around towards her. “And what do I gain from going to see him?”

Azazello leant towards her and whispered meaningfully:

“Well, you have a great deal to gain… You can exploit the opportunity…”

“What?” exclaimed Margarita, and her eyes became round. “If I understand you correctly, you’re hinting that I can find out about him there?”

Azazello nodded his head in silence.

“I’m going!” Margarita exclaimed forcefully, and seized Azazello by the arm. “I’m going anywhere you like!”

Puffing in relief, Azazello reclined against the back of the bench, covering with his back the word carved out on it in large letters – “Nyura" – and began saying ironically:

“Difficult people, these women!” He thrust his hands into his pockets and stretched his legs way out in front of him. “Why, for example, was I sent on this matter? Behemoth could have come; he’s charming.”

Margarita began with a crooked and bitter smile:

“Will you stop mystifying me and tormenting me with your riddles. I’m an unhappy person, you know, and you’re exploiting it. I’m getting myself into some strange business, but, I swear, it’s only because of your luring me with your words about him! My head’s spinning from all these incomprehensible things.”

“No dramas, no dramas,” Azazello responded, grimacing, “you have to put yourself in my shoes too. Giving the manager one in the clock, or throwing the uncle out of the house, or shooting and wounding someone, or some other trifle of the sort, that’s my real speciality – but talking to women in love. your humble servant! I mean, I’ve already been half an hour trying to talk you round. So you’re coming?”

“I am,” Margarita Nikolayevna replied simply.

“Then be so kind as to have this,” said Azazello and, taking from his pocket a little round gold canister, he reached it out to Margarita with the words: “Come on, put it away, or else passersby are looking. It’ll come in handy, Margarita Nikolayevna; grief has aged you a fair bit over the last six months.” Margarita flared up, but made no reply, and Azazello continued: “This evening, at exactly half-past nine, be so kind as to strip naked and rub this ointment into your face and your entire body. Do whatever you like after that, but don’t go far from the telephone. At ten I shall ring you and tell you everything that’s necessary. You won’t have to worry about anything, you’ll be taken where you need to go, and you won’t be caused any anxiety. Clear?”

Margarita was silent for a moment, then replied:

“Clear. This thing is made of pure gold, it’s obvious from the weight. Well, so what, I understand perfectly well that I’m being bribed and dragged into some shady business for which I’ll pay dearly.”

“What’s that about?” Azazello almost hissed. “Are you starting again?”

“No, wait!”

“Give the cream back!”

Margarita squeezed the canister tighter in her hand and continued:

“No, wait… I know what I’m doing. But I’m doing everything because of him, because I have nothing more in the world to hope for. But I want to say to you that, if you destroy me, you’ll be ashamed of yourself! Yes, ashamed! I perish for love,” and, striking herself on the breast, Margarita glanced at the sun.

“Give it back,” cried Azazello in fury, “give it back, and to hell with it all! Let them send Behemoth!”

“Oh no!” exclaimed Margarita, to the astonishment of passers-by. “I agree to everything: I agree to perform this pantomime of rubbing in of the ointment; I agree to go the devil knows how far! I won’t give it back!”

“Bah!” Azazello suddenly yelled and, goggling at the railings of the garden, started pointing his finger at something.

Margarita turned in the direction Azazello was pointing, but did not discover anything in particular there. Then she turned back to Azazello, wanting to get an explanation for that absurd “Bah!” but there was no one to give any explanation: Margarita Nikolayevna’s mysterious interlocutor had vanished.

Margarita quickly put her hand into her handbag, where she had hidden the canister away before that cry, and checked it was still there. Then, not reflecting on anything, Margarita hurriedly ran off out of the Alexandrovsky Garden.