31. On the Sparrow Hills

The storm had been carried off without a trace, and, flung in an arch across the whole of Moscow, a multicoloured rainbow hung in the sky, drinking water from the Moscow River. On high, on a hill, between two groves of trees, three dark silhouettes could be seen. Woland, Korovyev and Behemoth were sitting on saddled black horses, gazing at the city flung out beyond the river, with the broken sun gleaming in thousands of west-facing windows, and at the gingerbread towers of the Novodevichy Convent.

There was a sudden noise in the air, and Azazello, at the black tail of whose cloak flew the Master and Margarita, came down together with them beside the waiting group.

“It was necessary to disturb you, Margarita Nikolayevna and Master,” began Woland after a period of silence. “But don’t bear a grudge against me. I don’t think you’ll regret it. Well then” – he turned to the Master alone – “say goodbye to the city. It’s time for us to go,” and Woland pointed a hand in a black bell-mouthed glove to where innumerable suns were melting the glass beyond the river – where, above those suns, hung the haze, smoke and steam of the city, brought to a great heat in the course of the day.

The Master threw himself from the saddle, left them sitting there and ran to the brink of the hill. His black cloak dragged over the ground behind him. The Master began looking at the city. In the first moments an aching sadness stole up on his heart, but was very quickly replaced by a slightly sweet alarm, the excitement of the wandering gypsy.

“For ever! I need to make sense of that,” the Master whispered, and licked his dry, cracked lips. He began paying careful heed, and noting precisely everything that was happening in his soul. His excitement turned, as it seemed to him, into a sense of profound and deadly grievance. But this was passing: it disappeared and was replaced for some reason by proud indifference, and this by a presentiment of permanent peace.

The group of riders waited for the Master in silence. The group of riders watched the long black figure on the edge of the precipice gesticulating, now lifting his head, as though trying to cast his gaze across the entire city and see beyond its edges, now hanging his head, as though studying the trampled, sorry grass beneath his feet.

The silence was broken by the bored Behemoth.

“Allow me, Maître” he began, “to whistle in farewell before the ride.”

“You might frighten the lady,” replied Woland, “and besides, don’t forget that all your disgraceful deeds of today are now over.”

“Oh no, no, Messire,” responded Margarita, sitting in the saddle like an Amazon, with her arms akimbo and her sharp train hanging down to the ground, “allow him, let him whistle. I’m gripped by sadness before the long journey. It’s perfectly natural, isn’t it, Messire, even when a person knows that at the end of the journey happiness awaits him? Let him make us laugh, or else I’m afraid this will end in tears, and everything will be spoilt ahead of the journey!”

Woland nodded to Behemoth; the latter became very animated, leapt from the saddle onto the ground, put his fingers in his mouth, puffed out his cheeks and whistled. A ringing began in Margarita’s ears. Her horse reared up onto its hind legs, dry branches rained down from the trees in the grove, a whole flock of crows and sparrows took off, a column of dust flew down towards the river, and, in a river tram that was passing by the landing stage, several caps were seen to be blown off passengers and into the water.

The whistle made the Master jump, yet he did not turn around, but started gesticulating even more anxiously, raising an arm towards the sky as though threatening the city. Behemoth looked around proudly.

“A whistle, I can’t argue,” Korovyev remarked condescendingly, "a whistle indeed, but, if one is speaking impartially, a very average whistle!”

“I’m not a precentor, after all,” Behemoth, in a huff, replied with dignity, and unexpectedly winked at Margarita.

“Now let me have a try for old times’ sake,” Korovyev said, and rubbed his hands and blew on his fingers.

“But just mind now, just mind,” Woland’s stern voice was heard from atop his horse, "nothing liable to maim!”

"Messire, believe me,” Korovyev responded, and placed his hand on his heart, "for a joke, solely for a joke…” Here he suddenly stretched himself up, as though he were made of elastic, formed the fingers of his right hand into an intricate sort of shape, wound himself up like a screw, and then, suddenly untwisting, whistled.

This whistle Margarita did not hear, but she did see it, as she was thrown, together with her fiery horse, some twenty metres sideways. Alongside her an oak tree was torn up by the roots, and the earth was covered in cracks right down to the river. A huge strip of the river bank, along with the landing stage and a restaurant, was set down in the river. Its water boiled up, surged up, and the entire river tram was splashed out onto the opposite bank, green and low-lying, with the passengers completely unharmed. To the feet of Margarita’s snorting horse was tossed a jackdaw, killed by Fagot’s whistle.

The Master was startled by this whistle. He took his head in his hands and ran back to the group of travelling companions awaiting him.

“Well then,” Woland addressed him from atop his horse, “have all accounts been settled? Is the farewell complete?”

“Yes, it is,” the Master replied, and, calm again, looked Woland directly and boldly in the face.

And then above the hills there rolled out, like the last trumpet, the terrible voice of Woland: “It’s time!” and a sharp whistle and chuckle from Behemoth.

The horses tore away, and the riders rose up and galloped off. Margarita could feel her furious horse gnawing and pulling at the curb bit. Woland’s cloak was blown up above the heads of the cavalcade, and the darkening evening firmament began to be covered by this cloak. When the black pall was drawn aside for a moment, Margarita turned as she rode and saw that not only were there no multicoloured towers behind her with aeroplanes swinging around above them, even the city itself had already long ceased to be there: it had sunk into the earth and left after it only a haze.

32. Forgiveness and Eternal Refuge

Gods, my gods! How sad is the earth at evening! How mysterious are the mists over marshes. Whoever has wandered lost inthose mists, whoever has suffered much before death, whoever has flown over that earth, bearing a load beyond his strength, he knows it. A tired man knows it. And without regret he abandons the mists of the earth, its marshes and rivers, he gives himself up into the arms of death with a light heart, knowing that just it alone…

The magic black horses, even they grew tired and carried their riders slowly, and the inexorable night began catching them up. Sensing it behind his back, even the irrepressible Behemoth fell quiet and, with his claws dug into the saddle, he flew silent and serious, with his tail fluffed up.

The black shawl of night began to cover the forests and meadows; somewhere far below the night lit melancholy little lights, no longer now of interest or use to either Margarita or the Master, foreign lights. Night was overtaking the cavalcade, sowing itself upon it from above, and tossing out, now here, now there in the saddened sky, the white specks of stars.

The night was growing denser, flying alongside, grabbing the riders by their cloaks and, in tearing them from their shoulders, exposing deceptions. And when Margarita, fanned by the cool wind, opened her eyes, she saw how the appearance of all those flying to their destination was changing. And when the crimson full moon started out from behind the edge of a forest to meet them, all deceptions vanished – sorcerous, impermanent clothing fell off into a marsh and was lost in mists.

It is unlikely now that Korovyev-Fagot, the self-proclaimed interpreter for the mysterious consultant who had no need of any translations, would have been recognized in the one who now flew immediately alongside Woland to the right hand of the Master’s girl. In place of the one who in tattered circus clothes had quit the Sparrow Hills under the name of Korovyev-Fagot there now rode, with the gold chain of his rein softly ringing, a dark-violet knight with the gloomiest, never-smiling face. His chin rested on his chest; he did not look at the moon, he was not interested in the earth; he was flying alongside Woland, thinking some thoughts of his own.

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

“That knight once made an unfortunate joke,” replied Woland, turning his face with the gently burning eye towards Margarita, “his play on words, thought up while he talked about light and darkness, was not an entirely successful one. And after that the knight was obliged to joke a little more, and for a little longer than he had supposed. But this is a night when accounts are totted up. That knight has settled his account and closed it!”

The night had also ripped off Behemoth’s fluffy tail, had torn the fur off him and sent its tufts flying over the marshes. He who had been the cat that amused the Prince of Darkness proved now to be a slim young man, a demonic page, the best jester that had ever existed in the world. Now he too had fallen quiet and was flying soundlessly with his young face upturned to the light that was pouring from the moon.

To one side of them all flew Azazello, the steel of his armour gleaming. The moon had changed his face too. The absurd, ugly fang had vanished without a trace, and the blindness in one eye had proved fake. Both of Azazello’s eyes were the same, empty and black, and his face was white and cold. Now Azazello flew in his genuine guise, as the demon of the waterless desert, the killer-demon.

Margarita could not see herself, but she could see very well how the Master had changed. His hair was now white in the moonlight and was gathered at the back into a plait which flew in the wind. When the wind blew the cloak away from the Master’s legs, Margarita could see on his jackboots the little stars of spurs, now dying down, now lighting up. Like the young demon, the Master flew without taking his eyes off the moon, but he was smiling at it as though it were very familiar and loved, and, after the habit acquired in room 118, muttering something to himself.

And finally, Woland also flew in his genuine aspect. Margarita could not have said what his horse’s rein was made of, and thought it possible that it was chains of moonlight, and the horse itself just a mass of gloom, and the mane a thundercloud, while the rider’s spurs were the white specks of stars.

Thus in silence they flew for a long time until down below the terrain itself started to change. Melancholy forests were lost in the earthly gloom and carried away with them the dull blades of rivers too. Boulders appeared down below and began gleaming, while between them came the blackness of chasms which the moonlight did not penetrate.

Woland reined in his horse on a rocky, joyless, flat summit, and then the riders moved off at walking pace, listening to the way their horses crushed the flints and stones with their shoes. Bright-green moonlight flooded the platform, and in this deserted place Margarita soon made out an armchair, and in it the white figure of a seated man. It is possible that this seated man was deaf or too deep in thought. He did not hear the shuddering of the rocky earth under the weight of the horses, and the riders approached him without disturbing him.

The moon was a great help to Margarita, shining better than the very best electric lamp, and Margarita could see that the seated man, whose eyes seemed blind, was giving his hands an occasional brief rub and had those same unseeing eyes fastened on the disc of the moon. Now Margarita could already see that beside the heavy stone armchair, on which the moon was producing glittering sparks of some kind, there lay a huge, dark, sharp-eared dog, which was gazing anxiously, just like its master, at the moon. At the seated man’s feet there lay the pottery fragments of a broken jug, and there stretched a never-drying, red-black puddle.

The riders stopped their horses.

“Your novel has been read,” began Woland, turning to the Master, “and only one thing has been said: that it is, unfortunately, unfinished. So then, I wanted to show you your hero. For some two thousand years he has been sitting on this platform and sleeping, but when the full moon comes, as you can see, he is tortured by insomnia. It torments not only him, but his faithful guard too, the dog. If it is true that cowardice is the gravest sin, then the dog is probably not guilty of it. Thunderstorms were the only thing the courageous dog feared. But still, the one who loves should share the lot of the one who is loved.”

“What’s he saying?” asked Margarita, and her perfectly calm face was covered by a cloud of compassion.

“He is saying,” Woland’s voice rang out, “one and the same thing. He is saying that even in the moonlight he has no peace, and that he has a bad job. That’s what he always says when he’s not asleep, and when he’s asleep, he sees one and the same thing – a path of moonlight – and he wants to set off along it and talk with the prisoner Ha-Nozri, because, as he claims, he didn’t finish saying something then, long ago, on the fourteenth day of the spring month of Nisan. But, alas, for some reason he is unable to step out onto that path, and nobody comes to him. What can he do then? He has to talk to himself. However, some sort of variety is required, and to his speech about the moon he not infrequently adds that more than anything in the world he hates his immortality and unparalleled fame. He claims he would willingly exchange his lot with the ragged tramp Levi Matthew.”

“Twelve thousand moons for one moon once, isn’t that too much?” asked Margarita.

“Is the episode with Frieda repeating itself?” said Woland. “But, Margarita, don’t trouble yourself here. All will be right; the world is built on that basis.”

“Let him go!” Margarita suddenly gave a piercing cry as she had once cried when she was a witch, and this cry made a rock break away in the mountains and fly over the ledges into the abyss, its roar deafening the mountains. But Margarita could not say whether this was the roar of the fall or the roar of Satanic laughter. Whatever the case, casting looks at Margarita, Woland laughed and said:

“You shouldn’t shout in the mountains; he’s used to landslips anyway, and that won’t alarm him. There’s no need for you to intercede for him, Margarita, because the one with whom he so sought to talk has already interceded for him.” Here Woland again turned to the Master and said: “Well then, you can now complete your novel with one phrase!”

It was as if the Master had already been waiting for this while standing motionless and looking at the seated Procurator. He cupped his hands into a megaphone and shouted so that the echo set off jumping over the unpeopled and unwooded mountains.

“You’re free! Free! He awaits you!”

The mountains turned the Master’s voice into thunder, and that same thunder destroyed them. The accursed cliff walls fell. There remained only the platform with the stone armchair. Above the black abyss into which the walls had sunk a boundless city was lit up, with glittering idols reigning over it, set above a garden filled with the luxuriant growth of many thousands of these moons. Straight to this garden stretched the Procurator’s long-awaited path of moonlight, and the first to dash off down it was the sharp-eared dog. The man in the white cloak with the blood-red lining rose from the armchair and shouted something in a hoarse, cracked voice. It was impossible to make out whether he was crying or laughing or what he was shouting. It could just be seen that following his faithful guard, he too started running headlong down the path of moonlight.

“Am I to go that way after him?” asked the Master anxiously, touching the reins.

“No,” replied Woland, “why ever chase after what is already finished?”

“So that way, then?” the Master asked, and he turned and pointed back to where, hidden to their rear, there was the recently abandoned city with the gingerbread towers of the convent and the sun smashed to smithereens in its glass.

“No as well,” replied Woland, and his voice condensed and began to flow above the cliffs. “Romantic Master! The one that the hero invented by you and just released by you yourself so thirsts to see, he has read your novel.” Here Woland turned to Margarita: “Margarita Nikolayevna! It is impossible not to believe that you tried to devise the very best future for the Master, but truly, what I am offering you, and what Yeshua requested for you too, for you, is even better. Leave the two of them alone,” said Woland, leaning from his saddle towards that of the Master and pointing in the wake of the departed Procurator, “we’ll keep out of their way. And perhaps they’ll come to some agreement,” and here Woland waved a hand in the direction of Yershalaim, and it was extinguished.

“And there too,” Woland pointed to the rear, “what are you to do in the little basement?” At that point the broken sun in the glass went out. “Why?” continued Woland, convincingly and gently. “O thrice-romantic Master, don’t you want to walk in the daytime with your girl beneath cheerful trees coming into blossom, and to listen in the evening to the music of Schubert? Won’t it be pleasant for you to write by candlelight with a goose quill? Don’t you want, like Faust, to sit over a retort in the hope that you’ll succeed in fashioning a new homunculus? That way, that way! A house and an old servant already await you there, the candles are already lit, but soon they’ll go out, because you’ll meet the dawn at once. Down that path, Master, down that one! Farewell! It’s time for me to go.”

“Farewell!” Margarita and the Master answered Woland in a single cry. Then black Woland, without picking out any path, flung himself into a chasm, and his retinue went crashing down noisily in his wake. There were no more cliffs, nor platform, nor path of moonlight, nor Yershalaim around. The black horses had disappeared too. The Master and Margarita saw the promised dawn. It was starting right away, immediately after the midnight moon. The Master walked with his girl in the brilliance of the first rays of morning across a stony, mossy little bridge. They crossed it. The stream was left behind the faithful lovers, and they walked along a sandy path.

“Listen to the soundlessness,” said Margarita to the Master, and the sand hissed beneath her bare feet, “listen and enjoy what you weren’t given in life – quiet. Look, there up ahead is your eternal home, with which you’ve been rewarded. I can already see the Venetian window and the climbing vine: it reaches right up to the roof. There is your home, there is your eternal home. I know that in the evening those you love will come to you, those who interest you and will not trouble you. They’ll play for you, they’ll sing for you, you’ll see what light there is in the room when the candles are lit. You’ll fall asleep wearing your soiled and eternal nightcap, you’ll fall asleep with a smile on your lips. Sleep will fortify you, and you’ll reason wisely. And now you won’t be able to drive me away. I shall be the one guarding your sleep.”

Thus spoke Margarita, walking with the Master in the direction of their eternal home, and it seemed to the Master that Margarita’s words were flowing in just the same way as the stream that was left behind had flowed and whispered, and the Master’s memory, his uneasy memory, covered in pinpricks, began to fade away. Someone was releasing the Master to freedom, as he himself had just released the hero he had created. That hero had gone off into the abyss, had gone off irretrievably, forgiven in the night preceding Sunday, the son of the astrologer-king, the cruel fifth Procurator of Judaea, the horseman Pontius Pilate.