Epilogue

But all the same, what happened next in Moscow after Woland left the capital at sunset on the Saturday evening, vanishing along with his retinue from the Sparrow Hills?

It does not even need saying that over the course of a long time throughout the whole capital there was the heavy rumble of the most improbable rumours, which very quickly spread to distant and remote parts of the provinces too. It is nauseating even to repeat those rumours.

The writer of these truthful lines himself personally heard in a train, when heading for Theodosia, a story of how two thousand people in Moscow had left a theatre stark naked, in the literal sense of the word, and in that state had made their various ways home in taxicabs.

The whisper “unclean spirits” was heard in queues standing at dairies, in trams, shops, apartments, kitchens, trains, both suburban and long-distance, at stations and railway halts, at dachas and on beaches.

The most developed and cultured people, it stands to reason, took no part in these tales of unclean spirits visiting the capital, and even mocked them and tried to get the tellers to see reason. But a fact nonetheless remains, as they say – a fact, and brushing it aside without explanation is just not possible: someone had visited the capital. The embers that remained of Griboyedov alone, and much else besides, confirmed it too eloquently.

Cultured people took the point of view of the investigative team: a gang of hypnotists and ventriloquists with a magnificent command of their art had been at work.

Measures for their capture, both in Moscow and beyond its borders too, were, of course, taken immediately and energetically, but, most unfortunately, brought no results. The one calling himself Woland had vanished with all his associates, and neither did he return again to Moscow, nor appear anywhere at all, and nor did he reveal himself in any way. It is perfectly natural that there arose the assumption that he had fled abroad, but nowhere did he show any sign of himself there either.

The investigation of his case lasted a long time. After all, one way or another this was a monstrous case! Without even mentioning the four buildings that had been burnt down and the hundreds of people that had been driven mad, people had been killed too. This can be said for certain of two: of Berlioz, and of that ill-fated official of the Bureau for Acquainting Foreigners with the Sights of Moscow, the former Baron Maigel. They had, after all, been killed. The charred bones of the latter were discovered in apartment No. 50 on Sadovaya after the fire had been extinguished. Yes, there had been victims, and those victims demanded an investigation.

But there were other victims too, after Woland had already left the capital, and those victims were, sad though it might be, black cats.

About a hundred of these peaceable animals, devoted to man and useful to him, were shot or else destroyed by other methods in various parts of the country. Fifteen or so cats, sometimes in an extremely mutilated state, were delivered to police stations in various towns. In Armavir, for example, one of these entirely innocent beasts was led by some citizen into a police station with its front paws tied together.

The citizen had captured this cat at the moment when the animal, with a thievish look (what can you do about tomcats having such a look? It’s not because they’re depraved, but because they’re afraid that one of those creatures that are stronger than they are – dogs and people – might do them some harm or injury. Both the one and the other are very easy to do, but there’s no honour in it at all, I can assure you. No, none at all!), yes, so, with a thievish look the cat was for some reason about to charge into some burdock.

Pouncing upon the cat and ripping the tie from his own neck to tie him up, the citizen muttered venomously and threateningly:

“Aha! So now you’ve come to see us in Armavir, Mr Hypnotist? Well, we’re not frightened of you here. And stop pretending to be dumb. We can already tell what sort of a goose you are!”

The citizen led the cat to the police station, dragging the poor beast by the front paws, bound with the green tie, and using little kicks to force the cat to walk on its hind legs.

“Just you stop,” shouted the citizen, accompanied by whistling little boys, “stop playing the fool! It won’t work! Be good enough to walk like everyone else does!”

The black cat only rolled its martyr’s eyes. Denied by nature the gift of speech, it could not justify itself in any way. The poor beast is indebted for its salvation first of all to the police, and apart from that, to its mistress, a venerable old widow. As soon as the cat was delivered to the station, they satisfied themselves that there was the strongest possible smell of spirits coming from the citizen, in consequence of which they immediately found his testimony doubtful. And in the mean time the old woman, who had learnt from neighbours that her cat had been run in, dashed down to the station and arrived in time. She gave the cat the most glowing references, explained that she had known it for five years, ever since it had been a kitten, vouched for it as for herself, testified that it had not been observed doing anything wrong and had never been to Moscow. Just as it had been born in Armavir, so had it grown up and learnt to catch mice there.

The cat was untied and returned to the owner, having drunk, it’s true, from a cup of woe, and learnt from practical experience what error and slander are.

Apart from the cats, some insignificant unpleasantness befell certain people. Several arrests took place. Among others, detained for a short time in Leningrad were Citizens Wolman and Wolper; in Saratov, Kiev and Kharkov three Wolodins; in Kazan, Woloch; and in Penza, and why is utterly unknown, a Doctor of Chemical Sciences, Vetchinkevich. True, he was of enormous height and with a very dark complexion and hair.

Apart from that, caught in various places were nine Korovins, four Korovkins and two Karavayevs.

A certain citizen was removed, bound, from the Sevastopol train at the station of Belgorod. This citizen had taken it into his head to amuse his fellow passengers with some card tricks.

In Yaroslavl, just at lunchtime, a citizen appeared in a restaurant carrying a Primus which he had just got back from the menders. As soon as they saw him in the cloakroom the two doormen abandoned their posts and ran, and out of the restaurant after them ran all the customers and staff. While this was happening, in an incomprehensible manner the cashier lost all the takings.

There was a lot more besides, one couldn’t possibly remember everything. Minds were in great ferment.

Over and over again, credit has to be given to the investigative team. Everything was done not only to catch the criminals, but also to explain everything they had got up to. And it was all explained, and those explanations cannot but be deemed both sensible and irrefutable.

Representatives of the investigative team and experienced psychiatrists established that the members of the criminal gang – or, perhaps, one of them (suspicion for this fell principally on Korovyev) – were hypnotists of unprecedented power, able to show themselves not where they actually were, but in imaginary, displaced locations. Apart from that, they could readily suggest to those who encountered them that certain things or people were to be found where they actually were not, and, on the contrary, could remove from a field of vision those things or people which really were there.

In the light of such explanations absolutely everything is understandable, and even the thing that worried citizens the most: the seemingly totally inexplicable invulnerability of the cat when being fired at in apartment No. 50 in the attempts to take him into custody.

Naturally, there had been no cat on the chandelier, and nobody had even thought of firing back; shots had been fired at an empty space, while Korovyev, who had suggested that the cat was making mischief on the chandelier, could have readily been behind the backs of those shooting, acting up and enjoying his enormous but criminally employed capability for suggestion. It was he, of course, who had set the apartment alight after spilling out the petrol.

Styopa Likhodeyev, of course, had not flown off to any Yalta (such a trick was beyond the power even of Korovyev) and had not sent any telegrams from there. After he had fainted in the jeweller’s widow’s apartment, frightened by Korovyev’s trick of showing him the cat with a pickled mushroom on a fork, he had lain there until Korovyev, making fun of him, had rammed a felt hat onto him and sent him to the Moscow aerodrome, suggesting beforehand to the representatives of the CID meeting him that Styopa was climbing out of an aeroplane that had flown in from Sevastopol.

True, the Yalta CID affirmed that it had received the barefoot Styopa and sent telegrams regarding Styopa to Moscow, but not a single copy of those telegrams was discovered in any files, from which was drawn the sad but utterly inescapable conclusion that the band of hypnotists had the ability to hypnotize at a huge distance, and, moreover, not only individuals, but also whole groups of them. Under these conditions the criminals could drive people with the most stable psychological make-up out of their minds.

So why bother even mentioning such trifles as a pack of cards in a stranger’s pocket in the stalls, or women’s dresses that disappeared, or a miaowing beret and other things of the same kind? Such tricks can be played by any professional hypnotist of average power on any stage, including the straightforward trick with the ripping off of the compère’s head. a speaking cat is downright trivial too. In order to present people with such a cat, it is enough to know the first basics of ventriloquy, and no one is likely to have doubted that Korovyev’s art went significantly further than those basics.

No, this isn’t a matter of packs of cards at all, and not of forged letters in Nikanor Ivanovich’s briefcase. That’s all trifles! It was he, Korovyev, that drove Berlioz under the tram to certain death. It was he that drove the poor poet Ivan Bezdomny out of his mind, he that made him dream and see in his torturous dreams ancient Yershalaim, and sun-scorched, waterless Bald Mountain with three men hanging on poles. It was he and his gang that made Margarita Nikolayevna and her maid, the beautiful Natasha, vanish from Moscow. Incidentally, the investigation worked on that business with particular attention. It demanded to be cleared up whether these women had been abducted by the gang of murderers and arsonists, or had they fled along with the criminal group willingly? On the basis of the absurd and muddled testimony of Nikolai Ivanovich, and taking into account Margarita Nikolayevna’s strange and mad note left for her husband – a note in which she writes that she is leaving to be a witch, and considering the fact that Natasha had vanished, leaving all her personal items of clothing where they were – the investigation came to the conclusion that both the mistress and the maid had been hypnotized, like many others, and in that state abducted by the band. There also arose the probably perfectly correct idea that the criminals had been attracted by the beauty of both women.

But what remained quite unclear for the investigative team was the motive that had made the gang abduct the madman calling himself the Master from the psychiatric clinic. This they were unable to establish, just as they were also unable to get hold of the surname of the abducted patient. And so he was lost for ever under the lifeless alias: “No. 118 from block 1”.

And so almost everything was explained and the investigation came to an end, as everything in general comes to an end.

Several years passed, and citizens began to forget both Woland and Korovyev and the rest. Many changes took place in the lives of those who had suffered because of Woland and his associates, and no matter how minor and insignificant those changes, they ought to be noted all the same.

George Bengalsky, for example, having spent three months in the clinic, got well and came out, but was forced to leave his job at the Variety, and at the very busiest time, when the public was swarming for tickets – memories of the black magic and its exposure proved to be very long-lived. Bengalsky gave up the Variety because he realized that appearing every evening in front of two thousand people, inevitably being recognized and endlessly subjected to gibing questions about which he preferred: with a head or without? – was too excruciating.

Yes, and besides, the compère had lost a significant dose of his cheerfulness, something which is so essential in his profession. He was left with the unpleasant, distressing habit of falling into a state of alarm every spring at full moon, suddenly grabbing himself by the neck, looking around in fright and crying. These fits would pass, but all the same, given them it was not possible to do his previous work, and the compère went into retirement and began living on his savings – which, according to his modest calculations, ought to suffice him for fifteen years.

He left and never again met with Varenukha, who won universal popularity and love with his unbelievable, even among theatre managers, responsiveness and politeness. Complimentary ticket-seekers, for example, never called him anything other than their father and benefactor. Whatever time anybody phoned the Variety, always to be heard in the receiver was a soft but sad voice: “Hello,” and to any request for Varenukha to come to the phone the same voice would hurriedly reply: “I’m at your service.” But on the other hand, how Ivan Savelyevich did suffer for his politeness too!

Styopa Likhodeyev no longer has to talk with the Variety on the telephone. Immediately after leaving the clinic, in which Styopa spent eight days, he was transferred to Rostov, where he was appointed to the position of manager of a large grocery store. There are rumours that he has completely stopped drinking port and drinks only vodka infused with currant buds, which has made him much healthier. They say he has become taciturn and started avoiding women.

Stepan Bogdanovich’s removal from the Variety did not bring Rimsky the joy of which he had dreamt so greedily over the course of several years. After the clinic and Kislovodsk, the ever so, ever so old Financial Director with his shaking head handed in his resignation from the Variety. It is interesting that this resignation was brought to the Variety by Rimsky’s wife. Even in the daytime Grigory Danilovich himself could not find the strength within him to be inside that building where he had seen the cracked pane of glass in the window, flooded in moonlight, and the long arm reaching through towards the lower catch.

Having left the Variety, the Financial Director joined the children’s puppet theatre in Zamoskvorechye. In this theatre he no longer had occasion to clash over matters of acoustics with the most venerable Arkady Apollonovich Sempleyarov. In two ticks the latter had been transferred to Bryansk and appointed manager of a mushroom-preparation unit. Muscovites now eat pickled saffron milk-caps and marinated boletuses, can’t praise them enough, and are extremely glad of this transfer.

It’s a thing of the past, so it can be said that Arkady Apollonovich had not got on too well with the acoustics business, and however much he had tried to improve them, they had remained just as they had been.

To the ranks of those who broke with the theatre, besides Arkady Apollonovich, should be added Nikanor Ivanovich Bosoi too, although he was not even linked in any way with theatres, except by his love of free tickets. Not only does Nikanor Ivanovich not go to any theatre either for money or for free, he even changes countenance at any theatrical conversation. Not to a lesser, but rather to a greater degree has he come to hate, besides the theatre, the poet Pushkin and the talented artiste Savva Potapovich Kurolesov. The latter to such a degree that last year, when he saw in a newspaper a black-bordered announcement that, at the very height of his career, Savva Potapovich had suffered a stroke, Nikanor Ivanovich turned so crimson that he almost set off himself in Savva Potapovich’s wake, and roared: “Serves him right!” Moreover, that same evening, Nikanor Ivanovich, who was plunged by the death of the popular artiste into a host of painful memories, alone, with only the full moon illuminating Sadovaya for company, got terribly drunk. And with every glass the accursed chain of hateful figures before him lengthened, and in that chain were Sergei Gerardovich Dunchil and the beautiful Ida Gerkulanovna, and that red-haired owner of the fighting geese, and the candid Nikolai Kanavkin.

Well, and what happened to them? For pity’s sake! Precisely nothing happened to them, and nothing can happen to them, for they never existed in reality, as the likeable artiste and compère did not exist, and as the theatre itself, and the old skinflint, Porokhovnikov’s auntie, who left foreign currency to rot in the cellar, and, of course, the gold trumpets and the insolent cooks did not exist. All that was only dreamt by Nikanor Ivanovich under the influence of that rascal Korovyev. The only living person that flew into that dream was actually Savva Potapovich, the artiste, and he got mixed up in it only because he had engraved himself in Nikanor Ivanovich’s memory thanks to his frequent radio performances. He existed, but the rest didn’t.

So perhaps Aloizy Mogarych didn’t exist either? Oh no! Not only did he exist, he does even now, and, to be precise, in the post that Rimsky gave up, that is, in the post of Financial Director of the Variety.

Coming to his senses in a train somewhere outside Vyatka approximately twenty-four hours after his call on Woland, Aloizy found that, leaving Moscow for some reason in a disturbed state of mind, he had forgotten to put on his trousers, but had, on the other hand, incomprehensibly for him, stolen the house owner’s register of tenants, which he did not need at all. Paying a colossal sum of money to the carriage attendant, Aloizy acquired an old and soiled pair of trousers from him, and he turned back from Vyatka. But the privately owned little house was, alas, no longer to be found. The ramshackle clutter had been completely wiped out by fire. But Aloizy was an extremely enterprising man. Two weeks later he was already living in a splendid room on Bryusovsky Lane, and after a few months was already sitting in Rimsky’s office. And as Rimsky had suffered previously because of Styopa, so now Varenukha went through torment because of Aloizy. Ivan Savelyevich dreams of only one thing: that this Aloizy should be removed from the Variety to somewhere out of his sight, because, as Varenukha sometimes whispers in intimate company, never in his life has he apparently met such a bastard as that Aloizy, and he apparently expects anything you can name from that Aloizy.

However, perhaps the manager is biased. Aloizy has not been seen to have done any dirty work, nor indeed any work at all – if you don’t count, of course, the appointment of someone else to the job of the barman, Sokov. Andrei Fokich himself died of liver cancer in the First Moscow University Clinic some nine months after Woland’s appearance in Moscow…

Yes, a few years passed, and the events truthfully described in this book dragged on and died away in the memory. But not for everyone, not for everyone!

Every year, as soon as the festive spring full moon arrives, towards evening there appears under the lime trees at Patriarch’s Ponds a man of thirty or thirty plus. A rather gingerhaired, green-eyed, modestly dressed man. He is a member of the Institute of History and Philosophy, Professor Ivan Nikolayevich Ponyrev.

Arriving under the limes, he always sits down on that same bench on which he sat that evening when Berlioz, long forgotten by all, saw the moon breaking up into pieces for the last time in his life. Now whole, white at the beginning of the evening and later gold, with a dark little horse-cum-dragon, it floats above the former poet, Ivan Nikolayevich, and at the same time stays in the same place in its eminence.

Everything is known to Ivan Nikolayevich: he knows and understands everything. He knows that in his youth he became the victim of criminal hypnotists, afterwards underwent treatment and recovered. But he also knows that there is something he cannot control. He cannot control this spring full moon. As soon as it begins to approach, as soon as the luminary which once hung above the two five-branched candlesticks begins to grow and fill with gold, Ivan Nikolayevich becomes uneasy: he frets, loses his appetite and sleep, and waits for the moon to wax. And when the full moon arrives, nothing can keep Ivan Nikolayevich at home. Towards evening he goes out and walks to Patriarch’s Ponds.

As he sits on the bench, Ivan Nikolayevich now talks openly to himself, smokes, squints now at the moon, now at the turnstile he remembers so well.

Ivan Nikolayevich spends an hour or two like this. Then he moves off from his place and, always by one and the same route, via Spiridonovka, with empty, unseeing eyes he goes to the side streets of the Arbat.

He passes by the oil shop, turns where the crooked old gas lamp post is and steals up to the railings, behind which he sees a splendid, but as yet undressed garden, and in it – tinged by the moon on the side where the skylight with the triple-casement window juts out, and dark on the other one – a Gothic detached house.

The Professor does not know what draws him to the railings or who lives in this house, but he knows he does not have to struggle with himself during the full moon. Besides that, he knows that in the garden behind the railings he will inevitably see one and the same thing.

Sitting on a bench he sees an elderly and solid man with a little beard, wearing a pince-nez and with slightly piggish facial features. Ivan Nikolayevich always finds this resident of the house in one and the same dreamy pose, with his gaze turned towards the moon. Ivan Nikolayevich knows that, after feasting his eyes upon the moon, the seated man will be sure to transfer his eyes to the skylight windows and fasten his gaze on them, as though expecting them to fly open at any minute and something extraordinary to appear on the window sill.

All that follows, Ivan Nikolayevich knows by heart. At this point he must be sure to take cover a little further back behind the railings, for now the seated man will begin restlessly turning his head round and round, trying to catch something in the air with his roaming eyes and smiling ecstatically, and then he will suddenly clasp his hands together in a kind of delicious anguish, and will then mutter, both simply and quite loudly:

“Venus! Venus!.. Oh what a fool I am!”

“Gods, gods!” Ivan Nikolayevich will start to whisper, hiding behind the railings and not taking his burning eyes off the mysterious stranger. “There’s another victim of the moon. Yes, that’s another victim, like me.”

And the seated man will go on talking:

“Oh what a fool I am! Why didn’t I fly away with her? What was I afraid of, old ass that I am! Got myself a document! Oh dear, put up with it now, you old cretin!”

Thus he will continue until a window bangs in the dark part of the house, something whitish appears in it and an unpleasant female voice rings out:

“Nikolai Ivanovich, where are you? What are these fantasies? Do you want to catch malaria? Come and drink your tea!”

Here, of course, the seated man will come to and answer in a deceitful voice:

“Air, I wanted to get a breath of air, my darling! The air’s really very good!”

And here he will rise from the bench, stealthily shake his fist at the closing window and trudge off into the house.

“He’s lying, lying! O gods, how he’s lying!” mutters Ivan Nikolayevich, moving off from the railings. “It isn’t the air that draws him into the garden at all: he sees something at this spring full moon, on the moon and in the garden, up on high. Ah, I’d pay dearly to get to the heart of his secret, to know what Venus it was he lost and now fruitlessly gropes for with his hands in the air, trying to catch her”

And the Professor returns home, by now quite unwell. His wife pretends not to notice his condition and hurries him into bed. But she herself does not go to bed, and sits by the lamp with a book and looks at the sleeping man with bitter eyes. She knows Ivan Nikolayevich will wake up at dawn with an agonizing cry, will start sobbing and tossing about, and that is why in front of her on the tablecloth beneath the lamp lies a syringe in some spirit, prepared in advance, and an ampoule of liquid the colour of strong tea.

The poor woman, bound to a man with a serious illness, is now free and can go to sleep without any misgivings. After the injection Ivan Nikolayevich will sleep till morning with a happy face and dream dreams unknown to her, but somehow sublime and happy.

The scholar is woken up and driven to that piteous cry on the night of the full moon by one and the same thing. He sees an unnatural, noseless executioner, who, with a little jump and a sort of hoot, stabs a spear into the heart of Gestas, who is tied to a pole and has lost his reason. But it is not so much the executioner that is terrifying as the unnatural lighting in the dream, resulting from some sort of cloud which seethes and falls upon the earth, as happens only during natural disasters.

After the injection everything in front of the sleeping man changes. From the bed to the window stretches a broad path of moonlight, and a man in a white cloak with a blood-red lining climbs up onto this path and begins walking towards the moon. Beside him walks a young man wearing a ragged chiton and with a disfigured face. As they walk, they talk about something heatedly, arguing, trying to come to an agreement about something.

“Gods, gods!” says the man in the cloak, turning his haughty face to his companion. “What a vulgar execution! But tell me, please” – here his face turns from a haughty to an imploring one – “it didn’t take place, did it? I beseech you, tell me it didn’t?”

“Well, of course it didn’t,” his companion replies in a hoarse voice, “you imagined it.”

'And can you swear to that?” the man wearing the cloak asks ingratiatingly.

“I swear it!” his companion replies, and for some reason his eyes are smiling.

“I need nothing more!” the man wearing the cloak cries out in a cracked voice, and climbs still higher towards the moon, drawing his companion on. Behind them walks a calm and majestic, gigantic, sharp-eared dog.

Then the track of moonlight comes to the boil, out of it starts gushing a river of moonlight, which spills out in all directions. The moon dominates and plays, the moon dances and misbehaves. Then in the torrent a woman of inordinate beauty takes shape and leads out by the hand towards Ivan a man with a growth of stubbly beard who gazes around in fright. Ivan Nikolayevich recognizes him immediately. It is that No. 118, his nocturnal guest, and Ivan Nikolayevich stretches his arms out to him in his sleep and asks greedily:

“So that was how it ended then?”

“That was how it ended, my disciple,” No. 118 replies, and the woman comes up to Ivan and says:

“Of course that was how. Everything ended and everything is ending… And I shall kiss you on the forehead, and everything will be as it should be for you.”

She bends towards Ivan and kisses him on the forehead, and Ivan strains towards her and peers into her eyes, but she steps back and goes away together with her companion towards the moon.

Then the moon becomes frenetic, it rains torrents of light straight down on Ivan, it sprays light out in all directions, a flood of moonlight appears in the room, the light is rocking, rising higher, submerging the bed. Then it is that Ivan Nikolayevich sleeps with a happy face.

In the morning he wakes up taciturn, but perfectly calm and well. His pricked memory quietens down, and until the next full moon the Professor will be troubled by no one: neither the noseless murderer of Gestas, nor the cruel fifth Procurator of Judaea, the horseman Pontius Pilate.