The Master and Margarita 20 страница

Azazello leaned over to her and whispered in a gravely significant way, "A great interest indeed... You'll have the opportunity to..."

"To do what?" exclaimed Margarita, her eyes widening. "Am I right are you suggesting that I can get news of him there?"

Azazello nodded silently.

"Then I'll go!" Margarita exclaimed with vigor, seizing Azazello by

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the arm. "I'll go anywhere you want!"

Heaving a sigh of relief, Azazello leaned back against the bench, which had the name "Nyura" carved in large letters on it, and observed ironically, "A troublesome race, these women!" He buried his hands in his pockets and stretched his legs out in front of him. "Why did they send me on this job? Behemoth should have gone, he's the one with the charm..."

With a bitterly sad smile, Margarita said, "Stop trying to mystify and torment me with your riddles... I'm an unhappy person, and you're taking advantage of that. I may be getting involved in something strange, but if I am, I swear it's only because you lured me with your talk of him! My head is spinning from all these things I don't understand..."

"No scenes, no scenes," retorted Azazello with a grimace. "You should put yourself in my position. Smacking some bureaucrat in the puss, booting out some old geezer, shooting someone, or anything along those lines, that's my real specialty, but talking with a woman in love—no thanks. I've been trying to talk you into this for half an hour now. So will you go?"

"I'll go," was Margarita Nikolayevna's simple reply.

"Then be so kind as to take this," said Azazello, who pulled a round gold jar out of his pocket, and handed it to Margarita, saying, "Hide it, or people will see. It'll do you good, Margarita Nikolayevna, your grief has really aged you in the past six months." Margarita flared up but said nothing, and Azazello continued, "Tonight, at exactly nine-thirty, be so kind as to take off your clothes and spread this ointment over your face and your whole body. Then you can do as you like, but don't leave the phone. I'll call you at ten and tell you everything you need to know. You don't have to worry about anything, you'll be taken where you have to go, and you won't be caused any upset Understood?"

After a short silence, Margarita replied, "Understood. This thing is pure gold, I can tell by the weight. Well, what of it, I know perfectly well that I'm being bribed and lured into some shady business, for which I'll have to pay a high price."

"What is this," said Azazello, practically hissing, "are you starting in again?"

"No, wait!"

"Give me back the cream!"

Margarita clutched the jar tighter and continued, "No, wait... I know what I'm getting myself in for. But I'll do anything for his sake, because there's no hope left for me in this world. But if you destroy me, you'll be sorry! Yes, you will! Because I'll be dying for love!"—and, pounding her chest, Margarita gazed at the sun.

"Give it back," Azazello yelled angrily. "Give it back, and to hell with everything! Let them send Behemoth!"

"Oh, no!" exclaimed Margarita, to the astonishment of passersby, "I agree to everything, I agree to play out this whole comedy with the

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cream, I agree to go to the devil and back! I won't give it back!"

"Bah!" Azazello howled suddenly. His eyes bulging, he began pointing at something over toward the park railing.

Margarita turned to where Azazello was pointing, but didn't notice anything in particular. Then she turned back to him, expecting an explanation for that absurd "Bah!"—but there was no one there to provide it: Margarita Nikolayevna's mysterious interlocutor had vanished.

Margarita quickly thrust her hand into her bag, where, prior to Azazello's howl, she had hidden the jar, and assured herself that it was still there. Then, without further reflection, she ran hurriedly out of Alexandrovsky Park.

XX

Azazello's Cream

T

HE full moon hung in the clear evening sky, visible through the branches of the maple tree. The lindens and acacias traced an intricate pattern of spots on the garden floor. The triple-casement bay window, wide open but with blinds drawn, shone with a harsh electric light. The lights in Margarita Nikolayevna's bedroom were all turned on, revealing a state of total chaos. Chemises, stockings, and underwear were lying on the blanket on top of the bed, and other undergarments were strewn on the floor, along with a pack of cigarettes that had gotten crushed in the excitement. There were slippers on the night table next to an unfinished cup of coffee and an ashtray that held a smoking cigarette butt. A black evening gown hung on the back of a chair. The room smelled of perfume. And from somewhere came the smell of a red-hot iron.

Margarita Nikolayevna was sitting before her mirror in a bathrobe, which had been thrown over her naked body, and black suede shoes. In front of her lay a gold watch and next to it the small jar she had received from Azazello. Margarita's eyes were glued to the watch. At times it seemed to her as if the watch were broken and the hands weren't moving. But they were moving, albeit very slowly, as if they kept getting stuck, and finally the big hand hit twenty-nine minutes after nine. Margarita's heart gave such a terrible thump that at first she couldn't even pick up the jar. When she pulled herself together and opened the jar, she saw that it contained a greasy, yellowish cream which seemed to smell of swamp mud. With the tip of her finger Margarita scooped up a small glob of the cream and put it in her palm, which made the swampy, woodland smell more noticeable. She then began rubbing the cream into her cheeks and forehead.

The cream spread easily and seemed to be absorbed immediately. After several applications of the cream, Margarita looked in the mirror, and dropped the jar on the face of her watch, cracking the crystal. She closed her eyes, took another look, and burst into wild laughter.

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Her eyebrows, which had been plucked thread-thin at the ends, had thickened and now arched evenly over her eyes, which had become green. There was no longer any trace of the tiny vertical line on the bridge of her nose which had first appeared back in October when the Master disappeared. Gone, too, were the yellowish shadows around her temples and the barely noticeable crowsfeet at the outer corners of her eyes. Her cheeks were suffused with a rosy blush, her forehead had become clear and white, and her hair-salon permanent wave had loosened.

There in the mirror, staring back at thirty-year-old Margarita, was a twenty-year-old woman with naturally curly black hair, showing her teeth and laughing unrestrainedly.

Having laughed her fill, Margarita swept off her robe, scooped up a generous glob of the light, greasy cream, and began rubbing it vigorously all over her body, which immediately became rosy and began to glow. Then the throbbing in her temple, which had been bothering her all evening, ever since her meeting with Azazello in Alexandrovsky Park, disappeared in a flash, as if a needle had been removed from her brain. The muscles in her arms and legs got stronger, and then Margarita's body became weightless.

She gave a little jump and stayed suspended in the air, just above the carpet, then she felt a slow downward pull, and was back on the ground.

"Oh, what a cream! What a cream!" cried Margarita, throwing herself into an armchair.

The cream had transformed more than her appearance. Now her whole body, every part of it, surged with joy, and she felt as if tiny bubbles were prickling her all over. Margarita felt free, free of everything. In addition, she realized with utter clarity that her premonition of the morning had come true and she was leaving her house and her former life forever. But one thought from that former life still persisted, namely, that there was one last thing she had to do before embarking on the new and extraordinary something that was pulling her upwards, into the air. So, naked as she was, flying intermittently, she ran out of the bedroom into her husband's study, turned on the lights, and rushed to the desk. On a sheet of paper torn off a pad, she wrote in pencil, quickly and boldly and without any corrections, the following note:

Forgive me and forget me as quickly as you can. I'm leaving you forever. Don't try to find me, it's useless. I've become a witch because of the grief and the misfortunes that have befallen me. It is time for me to go. Farewell.

Margarita

Her soul relieved of every care, Margarita flew back into her bedroom, and Natasha ran in after her, loaded down with all sorts of

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things. And suddenly everything—a dress on a wooden hanger, lace shawls, dark-blue silk shoes on shoe trees, and a belt—fell to the floor, and Natasha clasped her now free hands.

"Well, do I look good?" cried Margarita loudly in a husky voice.

"How did it happen?" whispered Natasha, reeling backwards. "How did you do it, Margarita Nikolayevna?"

"It's the cream! The cream, the cream!" replied Margarita, pointing to the gleaming gold jar and doing a turn in front of the mirror.

Forgetting about the crumpled dress on the floor, Natasha ran over to the mirror and stared with voracious burning eyes at what was left of the cream. Her lips whispered something. She turned again to Margarita and said with a kind of reverence, "What skin! What skin! Why, Margarita Nikolayevna, your skin is glowing!" But then she remembered herself, ran over and picked up the dress, and began smoothing it out.

"Put it down! Put it down!" Margarita shouted at her. "The devil with it, throw everything out! Or, rather, keep it as a memento. To remember me by. You can take everything in the room."

Natasha stood for awhile, as if in a daze, staring at Margarita, then she fell on her neck, kissing her and shouting, "Like satin! It glows! Like satín! And your eyebrows, what eyebrows!"

Take all this stuff, and the perfume, too, and put it in your trunk and hide it," shouted Margarita. "But don't take the jewelry, or they'll accuse you of stealing."

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

Just then the sounds of a virtuoso waltz came blaring through an open window across the street, and a car was heard spluttering as it pulled up to the gates.

"Azazello will call any minute!" exclaimed Margarita, listening to the waltz streaming in from outside. "Yes, he will! And the foreigner is harmless. Yes, I can see that now, he's harmless!"

The car roared and pulled away from the gates. The gate banged and steps were heard coming down the path.

"That's Nikolai Ivanovich, I can tell by his footsteps," thought Margarita. "I'll have to do something interesting and amusing as a way of saying good-bye."

Margarita pulled the shade aside and sat sideways on the windowsill, her hands clasped on her knee. The moonlight caressed her right side. Margarita raised her head toward the moon and assumed a pensive and poetic expression. Footsteps were heard once or twice again and then they suddenly stopped. After admiring the moon a little longer, Margarita sighed for the sake of appearances, and turned to look down at the garden where she did, in fact, see Nikolai Ivanovich, who lived on the floor below her. Bathed in bright moonlight, he was sitting on a bench, and it was obvious that he had sat down suddenly. His pince-nez

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was askew, and he was clutching his briefcase to his chest.

"Well, hello, Nikolai Ivanovich," said Margarita in a sad voice. "Good evening! Have you come from a meeting?"

Nikolai Ivanovich made no reply.

"I, as you can see," Margarita continued, leaning further out into the garden, "have been sitting here alone, bored, looking at the moon, and listening to the waltz."

Margarita passed her left hand across her forehead, adjusting a stray curl, then said angrily, "That's not polite, Nikolai Ivanovich! I am a lady, after all! It's rude not to answer when someone is talking to you!"

Nikolai Ivanovich, visible in the moonlight down to the last button on his gray waistcoat, the last hair on his blond goatee, suddenly grinned a wild grin, got up from the bench, and obviously beside himself with embarrassment, did not remove his hat, as one would have expected, but, rather, waved his briefcase to the side and got into a crouching position, as if he were about to do a Russian dance.

"Oh, what a bore you are, Nikolai Ivanovich," continued Margarita. "I can't tell you how sick and tired I am of all of you, and how happy I am to be leaving you! To the devil's mother with all of you!"

Just then Margarita heard the phone ring in the bedroom behind her. She jumped off the windowsill and, forgetting about Nikolai Ivanovich, grabbed the receiver.

"It's Azazello," said the voice in her ear.

"Dear, dear Azazello!" exclaimed Margarita.

"It's time to fly away," said Azazello, and it was clear from his tone that he was pleased with Margarita's genuine display of joy. "When you fly over the gates, shout, 'I'm invisible!' Then fly around over the city for awhile, to get used to it, and after that, head south, away from the city, and go straight to the river. They're expecting you!"

Margarita hung up the phone, at which point something wooden-sounding started bumping around in the next room and began knocking at the door. Margarita opened the door, and in flew a dancing broom, brush-end up. It tapped a few beats on the floor with its handle, gave a kick, and strained toward the window. Margarita squealed with delight and jumped astride the broomstick. Only then did she remember that in all the confusion she had forgotten to get dressed. She galloped over to the bed and grabbed the first thing she saw, a light-blue chemise. Waving it like a banner, she flew out the window. And the sound of the waltz over the garden intensified.

Margarita slipped down from the window and saw Nikolai Ivanovich on the bench. He seemed to be frozen to it and was listening in a stupefied state to the banging and shouting coming from the lighted bedroom of his upstairs neighbors.

"Farewell, Nikolai Ivanovich!" cried Margarita, dancing about in front of him.

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He groaned and began edging down the bench, feeling his way with his hands and knocking his briefcase to the ground.

"Good-bye forever! I'm flying away," shouted Margarita, drowning out the waltz. She then decided that she had no need of the chemise and with an ominous chuckle she threw it over Nikolai Ivanovich's head. Blinded, he tumbled off the bench onto the bricks of the path.

Margarita turned to take one last look at the house where she had suffered so long, and in the lighted window she saw Natasha gaping with astonishment

"Farewell, Natasha!" Margarita shouted and urged her broom upward. "Invisible! I'm invisible!" she shouted even more loudly, and with the branches of the maple tree brushing against her face, she flew out over the gates and into the street. And the totally crazed waltz followed her aloft

XXI

Flight

I

nvisible and free! Invisible and free! After flying down her own street, Margarita came to another one which crossed it at a right angle. In an instant she cut across this long and crooked, patched and mended side street with its oil shop with the rickety door which sold kerosene by the jugful and pesticide in bottles, and it was here that she learned that however enjoyable her freedom and invisibility were, she still had to be somewhat careful. It was only by some miracle that she avoided a fatal collision with the rickety old lamppost down at the corner. After dodging it successfully, Margarita took a firmer hold of her broomstick and checked her speed, keeping a watchful eye out for electric wires and signs hanging over the sidewalk.

The third street on her route led directly to the ArbaL It was here that Margarita gained full mastery of her broom and realized how sensitive it was to the slightest touch of her hands or feet, and that she would have to be very careful flying over the city and not be too reckless. In addition, it was obvious to her, even before she got to the Arbat, that people on the street could not see her flying. Nobody craned his head, or shouted "look, look!" or jumped out of the way, or screamed or fainted or broke out in wild laughter.

Margarita flew along noiselessly, at very slow speed and not too high up, at about second-storey level. But even at slow speed, just as she was about to come out onto the blindingly lit Arbat, she made a slight miscalculation and hit her shoulder against an illuminated circular sign with an arrow painted on it. This made her angry. She reined in her obedient broom, flew over to the side, and then made a sudden charge at the sign, smashing it to smithereens with the end of her broom handle. Splinters crashed, pedestrians jumped out of the way, a whistle blew, and Margarita, the perpetrator of this gratuitous prank, burst out into gales of laughter. "I should be more careful on the Arbat," she thought. "Everything is so mixed up here that you get confused." She began diving between the various wires. The tops of cars, trolleybuses,

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and buses floated by beneath her, and rivers of hats flowed along the sidewalks, or so it seemed from up high. Streams branched off these rivers and flowed into the fiery maws of the stores open at night.

"What a mess this is!" thought Margarita in exasperation. "It's impossible to make a turn." She crossed the Arbat, flew higher, up to fourth-storey level, floated past the blinding lights of the theater marquee on the corner and into a narrow street with tall buildings. All their windows were wide open, and everywhere music could be heard playing on the radios. Out of curiosity Margarita peered into one of the windows. She saw a kitchen. Two primus stoves were roaring on top of the counter, and two women were standing next to it with spoons in their hands, squabbling.

"I told you to turn off the light when you come out of the toilet, Pelageya Petrovna," said the woman standing in front of a saucepan steaming with food, "or we'll have you evicted!"

"You're a fine one to talk," the other replied.

"You're two of a kind," said Margarita loudly and clearly, as she rolled over the windowsill into the kitchen. The two squabblers turned toward the voice and froze, dirty spoons in hand. Reaching carefully between them, Margarita twisted the knobs on both stoves and turned them off. The women groaned and gasped. But Margarita had already become bored in the kitchen and had flown out into the street.

At the end of the street her attention was drawn to the lavish hulk of a newly constructed eight-storey building. Margarita flew down and landed, and she saw that it had a black marble facade, wide doors, through whose glass one could see a doorman's gold-braided cap and the buttons on his uniform, and a sign in gold lettering over the entrance which said, "DRAMLIT HOUSE."

Margarita squinted her eyes at the sign, trying to figure out what "DRAMLIT" might mean. Tucking her broom under her arm, she walked into the entrance and opened the door, knocking against the astonished doorman in the process. On the wall next to the elevator she saw a huge, black board that listed the names and apartment numbers of all the residents written on it in white letters. When she took one look at what was written at the top of the list—"Writers' and Dramatists' House"—she let out a stifled, predatory howl. Raising herself higher in the air, she began reading the names voraciously: Khustov, Dvubratsky, Kvant, Beskudnikov, Latunsky...

"Latunsky!" screeched Margarita. "Latunsky! Why, that's him... He's the one who ruined the Master."

The doorman jumped in amazement and his eyes bulged as he stared at thé black board and tried to comprehend the miracle of the directory of residents suddenly letting out a scream. Margarita had, in the meantime, made a beeline upstairs, and was repeating over and over in a kind of rapture, "Latunsky—84... Latunsky—84...

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"Here's 82-on the left, 83-on the right, higher up, on the left-84. Here! And here's the namecard—'O. Latunsky." "

Margarita jumped off her broom, and the stone landing felt pleasantly cool against the soles of her inflamed feet. She rang the bell once, twice. But no one came to the door. As Margarita pressed the bell even harder, she could hear it ringing inside Latunsky's apartment. Yes, the resident of apartment No. 84 on the eighth floor should be grateful to the deceased Berlioz for the rest of his days, grateful that the chairman of MASSOLTT had fallen under a streetcar, and grateful that a memorial meeting had been set up for that very evening. The critic Latunsky was born under a lucky star. It saved him from an encounter with Margarita, who had become a witch on that Friday.

No one answered the door. Then Margarita flew downwards at full speed, counting off the floors as she went, reached the bottom, tore out onto the street and, looking up, counted off the floors on the outside of the building, trying to figure out which were the windows of Latunsky's apartment. They had to be the five dark ones at the corner of the building on the eighth floor. Sure that that was the case, Margarita rose up in the air and a few seconds later she was entering an open window into a room that was dark except for a narrow, silver strip of moonlight. Margarita followed it and fumbled for the light switch. A minute later, the lights were on in the whole apartment. Her broom was standing in a corner. Making sure that no one was home, Margarita opened the front door and checked the nameplate. It was the right one, Margarita had arrived at her destination.

Yes, they say to this very day the critic Latunsky turns pale when he recalls that terrible evening, and that he still pronounces Berlioz's name with reverence. No one knows what dark and foul crime might have marked that evening—when Margarita returned from the kitchen, she had a heavy hammer in her hands.

The naked and invisible aeronaut tried to restrain and control herself, but her hands shook with impatience. Taking careful aim, Margarita struck the piano keys, and a first plaintive wail echoed throughout the apartment. The totally innocent Becker baby grand cried out in frenzy. Its keys were smashed, and the ivory inlays flew in all directions. The instrument droned, howled, wheezed, and clinked. The polished upper sounding board cracked like a pistol shot and broke under the hammer. Breathing hard, Margarita tore at the strings and pounded them with her hammer. Finally, exhausted, she backed off and plopped into an armchair to catch her breath.

A sound of rushing water came from the bathroom and also from the kitchen. "I guess it's already overflowed onto the floor," thought Margarita, and then added aloud, "But there's no point in sitting around here."

A stream of water was already pouring out of the kitchen into the

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hall. Tramping through the water in her bare feet, Margarita carried buckets of water from the kitchen to Latunsky's study and emptied them into the drawers of his desk. Then, after shattering the doors of the bookcase in the study with her hammer, Margarita descended upon the bedroom. After smashing the mirror on the wardrobe door, she pulled out one of the critic's suits, and submerged it in the bathtub. She poured an inkwell full of ink, taken from the study, onto the luxuriously fluffed-up double bed in Latunsky's bedroom. The destruction she was causing gave Margarita intense pleasure, but the whole time it seemed to her that the damage she was causing was too slight. Therefore, she began striking out at random. She broke the pots of ficus plants in the room where the piano was. Before finishing that, she went back to the bedroom, slashed the sheets with a kitchen knife, and broke the glass-covered photographs. She did not feel in the least bit tired, and the sweat poured off her in streams.

Meanwhile, in No. 82, the apartment right below Latunsky's, the playwright Kvant's maid was drinking tea in the kitchen, thoroughly baffled by the various crashing, clanging, and running sounds coming from up above. When she raised her head toward the ceiling, she suddenly saw that before her very eyes its white color was changing to a kind of deathly blue. As she was staring at it the stain kept getting bigger and bigger, and suddenly it was oozing drops of water. The maid sat transfixed for a minute or two, amazed at what was happening, until finally a veritable shower poured down from the ceiling and splashed onto the floor. At this point she jumped up, put a basin under the stream of water, which didn't help at all since the shower was spreading and had begun to pour down on the gas stove and the table with the dishes. Kvant's maid then shrieked and ran out of the apartment onto the stairs, just as the doorbell started ringing in Latunsky's apartment.

"Well, the ringing has started... It's time to get going," said Margarita. As she mounted her broom, she listened to a woman's voice shouting through the keyhole, "Open up, open upl Dusya, open the doorl Isn't something overflowing in there? We're flooded down below."

Margarita rose a few feet in the air and took a swipe at the chandelier. Two bulbs broke, and glass splintered in every direction. The shouting outside the door had stopped, and tramping feet were heard on the stairs. Margarita floated through the window and once outside, swung her hammer and gave the glass a light blow. It sobbed, and shards of glass cascaded down the marble facade. Margarita moved on to the next window. Down below people were running along the sidewalk, and one of the two cars standing at the entrance to the building blew its horn and pulled away.

After finishing with Latunsky's windows, Margarita floated on to the neighboring apartment. The blows fell more frequently, and crashing and tinkling sounds filled the street. The doorman ran out the first en-

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trance, looked up, hesitated for a minute, evidently not yet sure what to do, stuck his whistle in his mouth, and started blowing it like crazy. Accompanied by the whistle, Margarita finished off the last window on the eighth floor with particular relish, then descended to the seventh floor and began smashing the windows there.

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