Levi turned his gaze to the foot of the hill where the cavalry regiment was deployed, and saw that significant changes had taken place there. He had a good view from above and could see the soldiers bustling about, pulling their lances out of the ground and throwing on their capes, and the grooms running out to the road, leading raven-black horses by the reins. It was obvious that the regiment was preparing to move out. Shielding his face from the blowing dust with his hand and spitting the sand out of his mouth, Levi tried to figure out the significance of the cavalry's imminent departure. When he turned his glance upward, he could make out a small figure in a crimson-colored military chlamys, who was making his way up to the execution site. Sensing that the joyous end was at hand, the former tax collector felt a chill in his heart.
The man ascending the mountain in the fifth hour of the outlaws' suffering was the commander of the cohort, who had ridden out from Yershalaim along with his orderly. At a wave of Ratkiller's hand, the cordon of soldiers opened up, and the centurion saluted the tribune. The latter drew Ratkiller aside and whispered something to him. The centurion saluted a second time and moved over to the group of executioners who were sitting on rocks at the foot of the posts. The tribune walked over to the man sitting on the three-legged stool, and he got up politely to meet him. The tribune said something to him in a low voice, and they both walked over to the posts. They were joined by the chief of the temple guard.
Ratkiller cast a squeamish glance at the dirty rags piled on the ground by the posts, rags that had once been the criminals' clothing and had been rejected by the executioners. He summoned two of them and ordered, "Follow me!"
A crazed, raspy-sounding song could be heard coming from the nearest post. On it was Gestas, who had been driven mad by the flies and the sun when the execution was nearing the end of its third hour, and who was now quietly singing something about grapes. He would, however, occasionally shake his turbaned head, and when he did, flies would lazily swirl off his face, only to return and light on it again.
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Dumas, who was on the second post, was suffering more than the other two because he had not lost consciousness, and he shook his head right and left frequently and systematically, so that he could strike an ear against each shoulder.
Yeshua had been more fortunate than the other two. In the first hour he had had intermittent fainting spells, and then he lost consciousness. Hb head, in its straggly turban, hung on his chest and he was, therefore, so covered with flies that his face had disappeared beneath a black, heaving mask. Fat horseflies dung to his groin, stomach, and armpits, sucking on his naked yellow body.
In response to a sign made by the man in the hood, one of the executioners took a spear, and another brought a bucket and sponge over to the post. The one with the spear raised it and ran it along each of Yeshua's arms, which were stretched out along the crossbeam of the post and fastened to it with ropes. The body with its protruding ribs gave a shudder. The executioner ran the end of the spear over his stomach. Then Yeshua raised his head and the flies took off with a buzzing sound, thus revealing the hanged man's face. Bloated from bites, and with swollen eyelids, his face was unrecognizable.
Unglueing his eyelids, Ha-Notsri glanced down. His usually bright eyes were now dulled.
"Ha-Notsri!" said the executioner.
Ha-Notsri's swollen lips moved slightly and in a hoarse outlaw's voice he asked, "What do you want? Why have you come?"
"Drink!" said the executioner, lifting the water-soaked sponge to Yeshua's lips on the end of the spear. His eyes flashing with joy, Yeshua pressed his lips to the sponge and greedily drew in the moisture. Dismas's voice was heard from the neighboring post, "That's unfair! He's as much of an outlaw as I am."
Dismas strained his body, but could not move. His arms were tied to the crossbeam in three places with rings of rope. He pulled in his stomach, dug his nails into the ends of the crossbeam, and turned his head toward Yeshua's post. His eyes burned with malice.
A cloud of dust enveloped the place of execution. It got very dark. When the dust lifted, the centurion shouted, "Silence on the second postl"
Dismas fell silent. Yeshua pulled away from the sponge, and trying unsuccessfully to make his voice sound gentle and convincing, he hoarsely implored the executioner, "Give him a drink."
It was getting darker and darker. The stormcloud rushing toward Yershalaim already filled half the sky. Turbulent white clouds swept by in front of the thundercloud, which was bursting with black water and fire. Lightning flashed and thunder clapped right above the hill. The executioner removed the sponge from the spear.
"Praise the merciful Hegemon!" he whispered solemnly and quiedy
152 The Master and Margarita
pierced Yeshua through the heart Yeshua shuddered and whispered, "Hegemon..."
Blood ran down his stomach, his lower jaw trembled convulsively, and his head dropped down.
As the thunder clapped a second time, the executioner let Dismas drink, and with the same words, "Praise the Hegemon!" killed him too.
Gestas, who had lost his reason, cried out in fright as soon as the executioner appeared beside him, but when the sponge touched his lips, he growled something and took hold of it with his teeth. Seconds later, his body also hung limply, straining against the ropes.
The man in the hood walked behind the executioner and the centurion, and behind him came the head of the temple guard. After stopping at the first post, the man in the hood looked closely at the bloodied Yeshua, touched the sole of his foot with his white hand and said to his companions, "He's dead."
The same ritual was repeated at the other posts.
Following this, the tribune signalled to the centurion, turned around, and began walking down the hill together with the head of the temple guard and the man in the hood. Dusk had fallen, and lightning ripped through the black sky. Suddenly there was a burst of fire and the centurion's shout, "Break ranks!" was drowned out by the thunder. The happy soldiers ran off down the hill, putting on their helmets.
Darkness covered Yershalaim.
The sudden downpour hit the centuries as they were halfway down the hill. The water poured down so ferociously that churning streams nipped at the soldiers' heels as they ran down the hill. They slipped and feu on the wet clay as they hurried to reach the level road on which— barely visible through the veil of water—the cavalry, soaked to the bone, was heading back to Yershalaim. A few minutes later, in the churning brew of thunder, fire, and water, there was only one man left on the hill.
Brandishing the knife, which had not been stolen in vain, scaling the slippery ledges, grabbing hold of anything he could, crawling at times on his hands and knees, he headed straight for the posts. He would at times disappear in complete darkness, only then to be suddenly lit up by flickering light.
When he reached the posts, standing ankle-deep in water, he ripped off his heavy, soaked tallith, and wearing only his shirt, threw himself at Yeshua's feet. He cut the ropes around his shins, climbed up on the lower cross beam, embraced Yeshua, and released his arms from their restraints. Yeshua's wet, naked body fell on top of Levi and knocked him to the ground. Levi was about to hoist him up on his shoulder, but something stopped him. He left the body in a pool of water on the ground with its head thrown back and its arms flung out and ran, slipping on the wet clay, over to the other posts. He cut the ropes on them too, and the two bodies fell to the ground.
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Minutes later, all that was left on the top of the hill were those two bodies and three empty posts. The water beat down on the bodies and turned them over.
By that time both Levi and Yeshua's body had vanished from the top of the hill.
XVII
An Upsetting Day
O |
N Friday morning, that is, the day after the accursed performance, the entire staff of the Variety Theater—the bookkeeper Vasily Stepanovich Lastochkin, two clerks, three typists, both cashiers, the messenger boys, ushers, and cleaning women—in short, everyone at the theater, were not at their posts. Instead, they were all sitting on the sills of the windows above Sadovaya Street, looking down at what was happening outside the theater. Stretched along the wall in a double line that reached as far as Kudrinsky Square were thousands of people. At the front of the line stood twenty or more of the most prominent scalpers in the Moscow theatrical world.
The people in line were very agitated and kept attracting the attention of passersby with their inflammatory stories of the previous day's extraordinary performance of black magic. These stories had particularly distressed the bookkeeper, Vasily Stepanovich, who had not attended the performance. The ushers were saying all sorts of preposterous things, for example, that after the performance some ladies ran down the street indecently clad and other things of that sort. The modest and quiet Vasily Stepanovich merely blinked his eyes as he listened to all their wondrous tales. He had no idea what he should do, even though something did have to be done, and by him in particular, since he was now first in command at the Variety Theater.
By ten in the morning the line of ticket seekers had swelled to such proportions that the police had gotten wind of it. Mounted and on foot they descended on the scene with astonishing speed and managed to restore some order. However, even an orderly line a mile long was a source of distraction and amazement for the people on Sadovaya Street. That was the situation outside the theater, and inside things weren't going very well either. The phones in the offices of Likhodeyev, Rimsky, and Varenukha, as well as those in the ticket office and the bookkeeping department, had been ringing nonstop since early morning. At first Vasily Stepanovich had made some sort of response to
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callers, as had the cashier and the ushers, who mumbled something into the phone, but after a while they stopped answering altogether because they had absolutely no answer to give to questions about the whereabouts of Likhodeyev, Varenukha, or Rimsky. At first they had tried to get off with lines like, "Likhodeyev is in his apartment," but this only made the callers say that they had called there and been told that he was at the Variety.
An agitated lady had called, demanding to speak with Rimsky. After she had been advised to call his wife, the receiver burst into tears, saying that she was his wife and that Rimsky was nowhere to be found. It was the beginning of a kind of nonsensical farce. The cleaning woman had already told everyone that when she came to clean the financial director's office, she found the door wide open, the lights on, the window overlooking the garden smashed, the chair overturned on the floor, and no one there.
Just after ten Madame Rimsky charged into the Variety, wringing her hands and sobbing. Vasily Stepanovich was totally at a loss and had no idea what to advise her. Then at ten-thirty the police showed up. Their first, completely reasonable, question was, "What's going on here, citizens? What's this all about?"
The theater staff pushed a pale and flustered Vasily Stepanovich forward and then stepped back. He had no choice but to call a spade a spade and admit that the administration of the Variety Theater, to wit, the director, financial director, and manager, had vanished and their whereabouts were unknown, that after last night's performance the emcee had been removed to a psychiatric hospital, and that, briefly put, last night's show had been nothing short of scandalous.
After consoling the sobbing Madame Rimsky as much as they could and sending her home, they seemed most interested in the cleaning woman's account of the state of the financial director's office. The staff was asked to get back to work, and a short time later an investigative unit arrived, accompanied by a muscular dog the color of cigarette ash, with highly intelligent eyes and pointed ears. The theater staff was immediately abuzz with the rumor that the dog was none other than the famous Ace of Diamonds. And, it was, in fact, he. His behavior astounded everyone. As soon as Ace of Diamonds ran into the financial director's office, he started to growl and bared his monstrous yellow fangs, then he lay down on his belly, his expression a blend of anguish and fury, and started to crawl over to the broken window. Having overcome his fear, he suddenly jumped up on the windowsill, stuck his pointed muzzle up in the air, and let out a wild and vicious howl. Not wanting to come down from the window, he growled and trembled and tried to jump out.
The dog was led out of the office and let go in the lobby, and from there he went out the front entrance into the street, leading those who were following him over to the taxi stand. There he lost the scent. After
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that, Ace of Diamonds was taken away.
The investigative unit settled into Varenukha's office and began summoning, one by one, all members of the Variety staff who had witnessed everything that had gone on at yesterday's performance. It must be said that the investigators encountered unforeseen difficulties every step of the way. The thread kept breaking in their hands.
Had there been any posters? Yes, there had. But during the night they had been pasted over with new ones, and now for the life of them, they could not find a single one! And where had the magician come from? Who knows? Wouldn't there have been a contract?
"One would assume so," replied a distraught Vasily Stepanovich.
"And if there had been a contract, would it have gone through bookkeeping?"
"Absolutely," answered Vasily Stepanovich in distress.
"So where is it?"
"It's not here," replied the bookkeeper, growing paler by the minute and spreading his hands helplessly. And indeed, there was no trace of any contract, not in bookkeeping's files, nor in those of the financial director, LJkhodeyev, or Varenukha.
And what was this magician's name? Vasily Stepanovich didn't know, he hadn't been at the show. The ushers didn't know, the ticket-office cashier crinkled her brow and thought and thought, and finally said, "Wo...Woland, I think."
And are you sure it was Woland? Well, maybe not. Maybe it was Faland.
The Bureau of Foreigners had never heard of any magician named Woland or Faland.
Karpov, the messenger boy, reported that he thought that the magician had been staving at Likhodeyev's apartment. Naturally they went there right away. And no magician was to be found. Nor was Likhodeyev. Grunya the maid wasn't there either, and no one knew where she had gone. Missing too was the chairman of the house committee, Nikanor Ivanovich, and Prolezhnyov!
Something utterly unimaginable had occurred: the entire administrative staff of the theater had disappeared. A strange and scandalous performance had taken place yesterday, but who had staged it and at whose instigation was not known.
And meanwhile, it was getting on toward noon, the time when the box office was supposed to open. Under the circumstances, however, that was out of the question! A huge piece of cardboard was hung on the doors of the theater, saying, "Today's performance cancelled." There was a commotion, starting at the head of the line, but once it was over, the line nevertheless began to break up, and in an hour there was no trace of it left on Sadovaya Street. The team of investigators left to continue their work elsewhere, the theater staff was dismissed, except
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for the watchmen, and the doors of the Variety were locked.
The bookkeeper Vasily Stepanovich still had two things to do right away: first, go to the Entertainment Commission to report on yesterday's events, and second, visit the commission's finance office to turn over the proceeds from yesterday's performance—21,711 rubles.
The meticulous and efficient Vasily Stepanovich wrapped the money in a newspaper, tied it with twine, put it in his briefcase, and, knowing the procedure well, set off for the taxi stand, rather than the bus or trolley stop.
As soon as the drivers of three separate cabs spotted the prospective passenger heading toward them with a bulging briefcase, they all took off from under his nose, looking back at him, for some reason, with loathing.
Dumbfounded, the bookkeeper stood stock-still for some time, trying to figure out what it all meant.
A few minutes passed and an empty cab pulled up, but as soon as the driver took a look at the passenger, he made a face.
"Are you free?" asked Vasily Stepanovich, coughing with surprise.
"Show me your money," the cabbie replied angrily, without looking at him.
Becoming more and more dumbfounded, the bookkeeper pressed the precious briefcase under his arm, removed a ten-ruble bill from his wallet, and showed it to the driver.
"I won't take you," was his curt reply.
"I beg your pardon..." began the bookkeeper, but the cabbie interrupted him, "Do you have any threes?"
The completely baffled bookkeeper took two threes out of his wallet and showed them to the driver.
"Get in," he shouted, banging the meter so hard that he almost broke it And off they went
"Are you short on change?" the bookkeeper asked timidly.
"I've got loads of changel" roared the driver, his eyes, bloodshot with rage, blazing in the rearview mirror. "This is the third time today. And others are having the same problem. Some son of a bitch gives me a ten-ruble bill, I give him change—four-fifty... He's gone, the bastard! Five minutes later I look and what have I got: a label from a bottle of mineral water instead of a ten-ruble bill!" Here the cabbie let loose some unprintable words. "The next guy I pick up beyond Zubovskaya Street. Another ten. I give him three rubles change. He walks off! I rummage in the change purse, and out flies a bee and stings me on the finger! The bastard!" the cabbie again let go a stream of unprintable words. "But the ten is gone. Yesterday at the Variety (unprintable words) some sort of slimy magician did an act with ten-ruble bills (unprintable words)..."
The bookkeeper was stunned. He shrunk back in his seat and acted
158 The Master and Margarita
as if he were hearing the word "Variety" for the first time, but meanwhile he thought, "Boy, oh boy!"
Having reached his destination, the bookkeeper paid the driver without any problem. He entered the building, and as he headed down the corridor to the director's office, he saw that he had come too late. The office of the Entertainment Commission was in chaos. A messenger girl ran past the bookkeeper with her eyes bulging and her kerchief askew.
"He's not there, not there, not there, my dears!" she was screaming, to no one knows whom. "His jacket and trousers are there, but there's nothing in the jacket!"
She disappeared behind a door and immediately afterwards, sounds of breaking dishes were heard. The head of the first section, whom the bookkeeper knew, ran out of the secretaries' room, but he was in such a state that he didn't recognize the bookkeeper and disappeared somewhere without a trace.
Shaken by all this, the bookkeeper reached the secretaries' room, which served as an anteroom to the chairman's office, and here he was utterly thunderstruck.
A menacing voice could be heard coming through the closed door of the office, a voice that unmistakably belonged to Prokhor Petrovich, the chairman of the commission. "Who is he raking over the coals now, I wonder?" thought the flustered bookkeeper, and as he looked around, he saw something else that was unnerving: there in a leather armchair, sobbing uncontrollably and clutching a wet handkerchief, her head thrown back and her legs stretched out into the middle of the room was Prokhor Petrovich's personal secretary, the beautiful Anna Richardovna.
She had lipstick all over her chin, and black streams of mascara ran down her eyelashes, and over her peachlike cheeks.
When she saw who had come in, Anna Richardovna jumped up and threw herself at the bookkeeper. Grabbing his lapels, she shook him and screamed, "Thank God! At least there's one brave soul! They all ran off, they all betrayed him! Come with me and see him, I don't know what to dol" And still sobbing, she dragged the bookkeeper into the office.
Once there, the first thing the bookkeeper did was drop his briefcase. Everything in his head went topsy-turvy. And, it must be said, with good reason.
Behind the huge desk with its massive inkwell sat an empty suit, moving a pen with no ink in it over a sheet of paper. The suit was wearing a tie, and had a fountain pen sticking out of its breastpocket, but there was no neck and no head above the collar, nor were there any wrists poking out of the sleeves. The suit was hard at work and completely oblivious to the confusion raging all around. Hearing someone come in, the suit leaned back in its chair, and from above its collar came the voice of Prokhor Petrovich, so familiar to the bookkeeper, "What is it?
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The sign on the door says that I'm not seeing anyone!"
The beautiful secretary let out a shriek, wrung her hands, and screamed, "See? Do you see?! He isn't there! He's not! Bring him back, bring him back!"
Just then someone poked his head in the door, groaned, and then left. The bookkeeper felt his legs start to tremble and sat down on the edge of a chair, but he didn't forget to pick up his briefcase. Anna Richardovna kept jumping around him, grabbing at his suit, and yelling, "I always tried to stop him when he used devil oaths! And now he's bedeviled himself!" At this point she ran over to the desk and in a soft musical voice that was slightly nasal-sounding from so much crying, she exclaimed, "Prosha! Where are you?"
"Who are you calling 'Prosha?" the suit asked haughtily, sinking deeper in the chair.
"He doesn't recognize me! He doesn't! Don't you see?" sobbed the secretary.
"Please don't sob in the office!" said the irascible striped suit, already angry, extending its sleeve for a fresh stack of papers, obviously intending to attach memos to them.
"No, I can't look at this, no, I can't!" cried Anna Richardovna and ran out into the anteroom, followed like a shot by the bookkeeper.
"Just imagine, I was sitting here," began Anna Richardovna, trembling with agitation, and once again grabbing the bookkeeper by his sleeve, "and in walks a cat. Black, big as a hippopotamus. I, naturally, screamed 'Scat!' He takes off, and a fat man with a kind of catlike mug comes in instead. He says to me, 'Are you the one who screams "Scat" to visitors?' And he goes right in to Prokhor Petrovich. Naturally, I follow him and yell, 'Have you gone crazy?' But the brazen fellow goes right up to Prokhor Petrovich and sits down in the chair opposite! Well, Prokhor Petrovich, he's the nicest man you'll ever meet, but he's high-strung. He just blew up. I don't deny it. He's irritable, works like a horse—and he blew up. 'How dare you,' he says, 'burst in unannounced?' And, just imagine, that smart aleck sank back in his chair and said, smiling, 'But I've come,' he says, 'on a little matter of business.' Prokhor Petrovich blew up again, I'm busy!' And the other one, can you believe it, says back, 'You're not busy with anything at all...' How do you like that? Well, naturally, at that point Prokhor Petrovich's patience ran out, and he shouted, 'What the hell is this? Get him out of here, the devil take me!' And then, just imagine, the other one flashes a grin and says, 'You want the devil to take you? That can be arranged!' And, bang, before I can let out a scream, I see that the guy with the catlike mug is gone, and sit... sitting there is the suit... Oooh!" howled Anna Richardovna, her mouth stretched so wide that it lost its shape.
She choked back her sobs and took a deep breath, but then she said something completely nonsensical, "And it writes, writes, writes! Drives
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you crazy! Talks on the phone! A suit! Everyone's run off like scared rabbits!"
The bookkeeper merely stood there, shaking. But at that point fate came to his rescue. Striding into the anteroom in a calm and businesslike way came the militia, that is, two policemen. When she saw them, the beautiful secretary began sobbing even harder and pointed to the office door.
"Come now, citizeness, let's not have any crying," said the first policeman calmly. The bookkeeper, feeling his presence to be completely superfluous, left the anteroom, and a minute later, was out in the fresh air. There seemed to be a draft blowing inside his head, like wind ringing in a pipe, and in this ringing he could hear bits and pieces of the ushers' tales about the cat that took part in yesterday's performance. "Aha! Could our cat-friend be making a return appearance?"
Having made no progress at all at the Commission, the conscientious Vasily Stepanovich decided to visit the branch office located on Vagan-kovsky Lane. To calm himself down a bit, he made the trip on foot
The Moscow branch office of the Entertainment Commission was located in an old house, peeling from age, set far back in a courtyard, and was famous for the porphyry columns in its vestibule.
On that particular day, however, visitors were less struck by the columns than they were by what was going on beneath them.
Several visitors stood frozen to the spot, staring at the young lady who was sitting and weeping at the table where all the entertainment literature was displayed and sold. At the moment in question she was not engaged in salesmanship of any kind and was instead waving off all sympathetic questions with a flick of her wrist. Meanwhile, from upstairs and downstairs, from every side and every department of the building came the clanging of at least twenty phones.
After crying for a bit, the young lady suddenly shuddered and shouted out hysterically, "Here we go again!" and then broke out in a quavering soprano:
A glorious sea, our sacred Baikal..
A messenger who appeared on the staircase threatened someone with his fist and then joined the young woman, singing in a dull, toneless baritone:
Glorious the ship, the barrel of salmon!...
The messenger's voice was joined by others coming from farther away, the chorus swelled, and soon the song echoed from every corner of the branch office. In Room No. 6, the closest by, where the accounting department was, a powerful, slightly hoarse, deep bass rang out
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