20. Azazello's Cream

The full moon hung in the clear evening sky, visible through the boughs of the maple. The limes and acacias had covered the earth in the garden with a complex pattern of shadows. The triple window in the skylight – open, but with the blind drawn – shone with a furious electric light. In Margarita Nikolayevna’s bedroom all the lights were burning, illuminating the complete disarray in the room.

On the blanket on the bed lay camisoles, stockings and linen, and there was crumpled linen just scattered on the floor alongside a packet of cigarettes which had been squashed in agitation. Shoes stood on the bedside table alongside an unfinished cup of coffee and an ashtray in which a cigarette stub was smouldering. On the back of a chair hung a black evening dress. The room smelt of perfume. Besides that, coming from somewhere was the smell of a burning-hot iron.

Margarita Nikolayevna was sitting in front of the cheval glass wearing just her bathrobe, thrown onto her naked body, and black suede shoes. Her watch on a gold bracelet lay in front of Margarita Nikolayevna alongside the canister she had got from Azazello, and Margarita did not take her eyes off the watch face. At times it began to seem to her that the watch had broken and the hands were not moving. But they were moving, albeit very slowly, as though sticking, and finally the long hand fell on the twenty-ninth minute after nine. Margarita’s heart gave a such terrible thump that she could not even lay hands on the canister at once. Composing herself, Margarita opened it and saw in the canister some greasy, yellowish cream. It seemed to her to smell of marsh slime. With the tip of a finger Margarita put a little dab of the cream onto her palm, at which there was a stronger smell of marsh grasses and the forest, and then began rubbing the cream into her forehead and cheeks with her palm.

The cream spread easily and, as it seemed to Margarita, evaporated straight away. After a few rubs, Margarita glanced in the mirror and dropped the canister right onto the glass of the watch, covering it in cracks. Margarita closed her eyes, then took another glance and burst into roars of wild laughter.

Her eyebrows, plucked along their edges with pincers into a thread, had thickened and lay in black, even arcs above eyes that had turned green. The fine vertical crease that cut across the bridge of her nose and had appeared then, in October, when the Master had disappeared, had vanished without trace. The yellow shadows by her temples had vanished as well, and the two scarcely noticeable little networks of lines at the outer corners of her eyes. The skin of her cheeks had filled with an even pink colour; her forehead had become white and unblemished, while her perm had come out.

Thirty-year-old Margarita was gazed at from the mirror by a naturally curly, black-haired woman of about twenty who was roaring with unrestrained laughter and baring her teeth.

When she had finished laughing, Margarita slipped out of her robe in a single leap, scooped up the light, greasy cream liberally and with firm strokes started rubbing it into the skin of her body, which immediately turned pink and began to glow. Then instantly, as if a needle had been plucked from her brain, the temple that had been aching all evening after the meeting in the Alexandrovsky Garden quietened down, the muscles of her arms and legs strengthened, and Margarita’s body lost its weight.

She gave a little jump and hung in the air a little way above the rug, then she slowly began to be drawn downwards and dropped.

“What a cream! What a cream!” cried Margarita, flinging herself into an armchair.

The rubbing-in changed her not only outwardly. In the whole of her now, in every particle of her body, there boiled a joy which she could feel like little bubbles that made her entire body tingle. Margarita felt herself free, free from everything. Apart from that, she realized with complete clarity that what had happened was precisely what her premonition had told her ab out that morning, and she was leaving the house and her former life for ever. But all the same, there broke away from that former life one thought about just one last duty she needed to carry out before the start of something new and extraordinary that was drawing her up into the air. And, naked as she was, she ran over to her husband’s study, continually lifting off into the air, and, putting the light on in the room, she rushed to the desk. On a sheet torn from a notepad, without making any corrections, quickly and in large letters she wrote a note in pencil:

Forgive me, and forget me as soon as possible. I’m leaving you for ever. Don’t look for me, it’s useless. The sorrow and calamities that have struck me have made me become a witch. I must go. Farewell.

Margarita

With her soul completely unburdened, Margarita flew into the bedroom, and Natasha ran in there too, right behind her, loaded with things. And all those things – a dress on a wooden hanger, lace shawls, blue silk shoes on trees and a belt – all this was immediately scattered onto the floor, and Natasha clasped her freed hands together.

“Well, do I look good?” Margarita Nikolayevna cried loudly in a hoarse voice.

“How on earth?” whispered Natasha, backing away. “How do you do that, Margarita Nikolayevna?”

“It’s the cream! The cream, the cream!” Margarita replied, pointing towards the glittering gold canister, and twirling around in front of the mirror.

Forgetting about the crumpled dress lying on the floor, Natasha ran up to the cheval glass and stared with greedy, burning eyes at the remainder of the ointment. Her lips were whispering something. She again turned to Margarita and said with a sort of reverence:

“What skin, eh! What skin! Margarita Nikolayevna, your skin’s glowing, you know!” But at this point she remembered herself, ran over to the dress, picked it up and began shaking it down.

“Leave it! Leave it!” Margarita cried to her. “To hell with it, leave it all! But no, take it for yourself as a memento. Take it as a memento, I say. Take everything there is in the room!”

As though half out of her mind, Natasha looked at Margarita for a time without moving, then she threw her arms around her neck, kissing her and crying:

"Satin! Glowing! Satin! And your eyebrows, what eyebrows!” “Take all the rags, take the perfume and drag it all off to your trunk, hide it away,” cried Margarita, “but don’t take the valuables, or else you’ll be accused of stealing!”

Natasha raked together into a bundle whatever came to hand – dresses, shoes, stockings and underwear – and ran off out of the bedroom.

At that moment, from an open window somewhere on the other side of the lane, a thunderous, virtuoso waltz burst out and took flight, and the puffing of a car driving up to the gates was heard.

“Azazello will soon be ringing!” exclaimed Margarita, listening to the waltz pouring forth in the lane. “He’ll be ringing! And the foreigner’s harmless. Yes, I realize now that he’s harmless!”

The car began making a noise, moving off from the gates. The side gate banged, and footsteps were heard on the flagstones of the path.

“It’s Nikolai Ivanovich, I recognize him by his footsteps,” thought Margarita. “I ought to do something very funny and interesting to say goodbye.”

Margarita tore the blind aside and sat down on the window sill sideways on, clasping her arms around her knee. The moonlight licked her right side. Margarita raised her head towards the moon and pulled a pensive and poetic face. The footsteps tapped a couple of times more and then suddenly fell quiet. After admiring the moon a little more, and sighing for the sake of decency, Margarita turned her head towards the garden and did indeed see Nikolai Ivanovich, who lived on the bottom floor of that same house. Nikolai Ivanovich was flooded with bright moonlight. He was sitting on a bench, and everything pointed to his having dropped onto it suddenly. The pince-nez on his face had somehow gone askew, and he was squeezing his briefcase in his arms.

“Ah, hello, Nikolai Ivanovich,” said Margarita in a sad voice, “good evening! Have you come from a meeting?”

Nikolai Ivanovich made no reply to this.

“Well, I’m sitting here alone, as you can see,” continued Margarita, leaning out into the garden a little more, “pining, gazing at the moon and listening to the waltz.”

Margarita passed her left hand over her temple, adjusting a strand of hair, then said angrily:

“This is impolite, Nikolai Ivanovich! After all, in the end I am a lady! It’s rude not to answer, you know, when you’re being spoken to!”

Nikolai Ivanovich, visible in the moonlight down to the last button on his grey waistcoat, to the last little hair in his light little wedge-shaped beard, suddenly grinned a wild grin, rose from the bench and, obviously beside himself with embarrassment, instead of doffing his hat, waved his briefcase to one side and bent his legs, as though intending to drop into a squat.

“Oh, what a boring sort you are, Nikolai Ivanovich!” Margarita continued. “I’m so fed up with the lot of you in general, I just can’t tell you, and I’m so happy to be parting with you! To hell with you!”

At that moment, behind Margarita’s back in the bedroom the telephone let out a peal. Margarita darted away from the window sill and, forgetting about Nikolai Ivanovich, grabbed the receiver.

“Azazello speaking,” came the words in the receiver.

“Dear, dear Azazello!” exclaimed Margarita.

“It’s time! Fly out,” Azazello began in the receiver, and it could be heard in his tone that he found Margarita’s sincere, joyous impulse pleasing, “and when you’re flying over the gates, cry ‘Invisible!’ Next fly about over the city for a while to get used to it, and then fly south, out of the city, and straight to the river… You’re expected!”

Margarita hung up the receiver, and at that point in the next room something started stumping about woodenly and beating at the door. Margarita threw it open, and a broom with the bristles uppermost flew dancing into the bedroom. It was beating out a tattoo on the floor with its end, kicking out and straining towards the window. Margarita shrieked in delight and leapt up astride the broom. Only at this point did it flash through the rider’s mind that in all this commotion she had forgotten to get dressed. She galloped over to the bed and grabbed the first thing that came to hand, some pale-blue nightshirt. Waving it up in the air like a standard, she flew out of the window. And the waltz struck up more vigorously over the garden.

Margarita slipped down from the window and saw Nikolai Ivanovich on the bench. It was as if he had frozen on it and was listening in complete stupefaction to the cries and the clatter that were carrying from the lighted bedroom of the residents upstairs.

“Farewell, Nikolai Ivanovich!” shouted Margarita, dancing about in front of Nikolai Ivanovich.

The latter gasped and began crawling along the bench, pulling himself across it with his hands and knocking his briefcase off onto the ground.

“Farewell for ever! I’m flying away!” shouted Margarita, drowning out the waltz. At this point she grasped that the nightshirt was of no use to her, was unnecessary, and, breaking into sinister laughter, she covered Nikolai Ivanovich’s head with it. The blinded Nikolai Ivanovich crashed from the bench onto the bricks of the path.

Margarita turned to take a last look at the house where she had been so long in torment and in the blazing window saw Natasha’s face, contorted in astonishment.

“Farewell, Natasha!” Margarita cried, and jerked the broom up. “Invisible! Invisible!” she cried, even louder, and between the branches of the maple, which whipped her across the face, she flew over the gates, flew out into the lane. And in her wake flew the waltz, which had now gone completely mad.