not  from any institution?  Sit down,
please.'
     Margarita obeyed unquestioningly, but even so, as she was sitting down,
she asked once more:
     'Who are you?'
     'Well,  all right, my  name  is  Azazello,  but  anyhow that tells  you
nothing.'
     'And you won't tell  me how you  found out about the pages and about my
thoughts?'
     'No, I won't,' Azazello replied drily.
     'But do you know anything about him?' Margarita whispered imploringly.
     'Well, suppose I do.'
     'I  implore  you, tell me only  one  thing  ...  is he alive? ... Don't
torment me!'
     'Well, he's alive, he's alive,' Azazello responded reluctantly.
     'Oh, God! ...'
     'Please, no excitements and exclamations,' Azazello said, frowning.
     `Forgive  me,  forgive me,' the  now obedient  Margarita  murmured, 'of
course, I got angry  with you. But, you must agree, when a  woman is invited
in  the street  to  pay a visit somewhere ... I have no prejudices, I assure
you,' Margarita smiled joylessly, 'but I never see any foreigners, I have no
wish to  associate with  them ... and, besides, my husband ...  my  drama is
that I'm living with someone I don't love ...  but I consider it an unworthy
thing to spoil his life ... I've never seen  anything but kindness from  him
...'
     Azazello heard out this incoherent speech with visible boredom and said
sternly:
     'I beg you to be silent for a moment.'
     Margarita obediently fell silent.
     The foreigner to whom I'm inviting you is not dangerous at all. And not
a single soul will know of this visit. That I can guarantee you.'
     'And what does he need me for?' Margarita asked insinuatingly.
     'You'll find that out later.'
     'I understand ... I must give myself to him,' Margarita said pensively.
     To which Azazello grunted somehow haughtily and replied thus:
     'Any woman in the world, I can assure you, would dream of just that,'
     Azazello's mug twisted with a little laugh, 'but I must disappoint you,
it won't happen.'
     'What kind of foreigner is that?!' Margarita exclaimed in bewilderment,
so loudly that people passing by turned to  look at her.  'And what interest
do I have in going to him?'
     Azazello leaned towards her and whispered meaningfully:
     'Well, a very great interest ... you'd better use the opportunity...'
     'What?' exclaimed Margarita, and her eyes  grew round. 'If I understand
you rightly, you're hinting that I may find out about him there?'
     Azazello silently nodded.
     'I'll  go!' Margarita  exclaimed with force and seized Azazello  by the
hand. 'I'll go wherever you like!'
     Azazello, with  a sigh of relief, leaned against the back of the bench,
covering up  the  name  `Niura'  carved on it  in  big letters,  and  saying
ironically:
     'Difficult folk, these  women!' he  put  his hands  in  his pockets and
stretched his legs way out. 'Why, for instance, was I sent on this business?
Behemoth should have gone, he's a charmer...'
     Margarita said, with a crooked and bitter smile:
     'Stop mystifying me and tormenting me with your riddles. I'm an unhappy
person, and you're taking  advantage of it... I'm getting myself  into  some
strange story, but I swear, it's only because  you lured me with words about
him! My head's spinning from all these puzzlements...'
     'No dramas, no dramas,' Azazello returned, making faces, 'you must also
put yourself in my position. To give  some administrator a pasting, or chuck
an uncle out of the house, or gun somebody down, or  any other trifle of the
sort - that's right in my line. But talking with a woman in love, no thanks!
... It's half  an hour now that I've been wangling  you into it... So you'll
go?'
     'I will,' Margarita Nikolaevna answered simply.
     'Be  so  good as  to accept this, then,' said Azazello, and, pulling  a
round little golden box from his pocket, he offered it to Margarita with the
words:  'Hide  it  now, the  passers-by are looking.  It'll come in  useful,
Margarita Nikolaevna, you've aged a lot from grief in the last half-year.'
     Margarita flushed but said nothing, and Azazello went  on: 'Tonight, at
exactly half  past nine, be so  good as to take off all your clothes and rub
your face and your whole body with this ointment. Then do whatever you like,
only don't go far from the telephone. At ten  I'll call you and tell you all
you need to know. You won't have to worry about a thing, you'll be delivered
where you need to go and won't be put to any trouble. Understood?'
     Margarita was silent for a moment, then replied:
     'Understood. This thing  is pure gold, you can tell by  the weight. So,
then, I understand  perfectly well that I'm being bribed and drawn into some
shady story for which I'm going to pay dearly...'
     'What is all this?' Azazello almost hissed. 'You're at it again?'
     'No, wait!'
     'Give me back  the cream!' Margarita  clutched the box more tightly  in
her hand and said:
     'No, wait! ... I know what I'm getting into. But I'm getting into it on
account of him, because  I have no more hope for anything in this world. But
I want to tell you that if you're going to  ruin me, you'll be ashamed! Yes,
ashamed!  I'm perishing on account of love!' -  and striking herself on  the
breast, Margarita glanced at the sun.
     'Give it back!'  Azazello cried  angrily.  'Give it back and devil take
the whole thing. Let them send Behemoth!'
     'Oh, no!' exclaimed Margarita,  shocking  the passers-by. `I  agree  to
everything, I agree to perform this comedy of rubbing in the ointment, agree
to go to the devil and beyond! I won't give it back!'
     'Hah!' Azazello suddenly shouted and, goggling  his eyes at  the garden
fence, began pointing off somewhere with his finger.
     Margarita  turned to  where Azazello  was pointing, but  found  nothing
special  there.  Then  she  turned  back  to Azazello,  wishing  to  get  an
explanation  of  this  absurd  'Hah!'  but  there was  no  one  to  give  an
explanation: Margarita Nikolaevna's mysterious interlocutor had disappeared.
     Margarita quickly thrust  her hand into her  handbag, where she had put
the  box before this shouting,  and made sure  it was there.  Then,  without
reflecting  on  anything,  Margarita hurriedly ran out of the  Alexandrovsky
Garden.


        CHAPTER 20. Azazello's Cream


     The moon in the clear evening sky hung full, visible  through the maple
branches. Lindens  and  acacias drew  an  intricate  pattern of spots on the
ground in the garden. The triple  bay window, open but covered by a curtain,
was lit with a furious electric light. In Margarita Nikolaevna's bedroom all
the lamps were burning, illuminating the total disorder in the room.
     On the blanket on the bed lay shifts, stockings and underwear. Crumpled
underwear  was  also  simply  lying about  on  the floor  next  to  a box of
cigarettes crushed in the excitement. Shoes stood on the night table next to
an unfinished  cup of  coffee and an ashtray in which a butt was  smoking. A
black  evening  dress hung over the back of a  chair. The  room  smelled  of
perfume.  Besides  that,  the smell  of  a  red-hot  iron  was  coming  from
somewhere.
     Margarita  Nikolaevna  sat  in  front of the pier-glass,  with  just  a
bathrobe thrown  over her  naked  body, and  in  black  suede  shoes. A gold
bracelet  with a watch lay in  front of Margarita Nikolaevna, beside the box
she had received from Azazello, and Margarita did not take her eyes from its
face.
     At times it  began to seem to  her  that the  watch was broken  and the
hands were not  moving. But they  were  moving, though very  slowly,  as  if
sucking, and at last the big hand fell on the twenty-ninth minute past nine.
     Margarita's  heart  gave  a terrible thump, so that she could  not even
take hold of the box  right  away. Having mastered herself, Margarita opened
it  and saw in  the  box a  rich, yellowish cream. It seemed to her  that it
smelted of swamp slime.  With the tip of her finger, Margarita put  a  small
dab  of the cream  on her  palm,  the  smell of swamp grass and forest  grew
stronger, and then  she began rubbing the cream into her forehead and cheeks
with her palm.
     The cream  spread easily and, as it seemed  to Margarita, evaporated at
once.  Having  rubbed several times, Margarita  glanced into the  mirror and
dropped  the box  right  on  her  watch  crystal, which became covered  with
cracks. Margarita closed her eyes, then glanced once  again  and  burst into
stormy laughter.
     Her  eyebrows, plucked  to a thread with tweezers, thickened and lay in
even black arches over her  greening eyes. The thin vertical crease  cutting
the bridge of  her nose, which had appeared back then, in October,  when the
master  vanished, disappeared  without a trace. So did the yellowish shadows
at her temples and the  two barely noticeable little webs of wrinkles at the
outer corners  of her eyes. The  skin of her cheeks filled out with  an even
pink colour, her  forehead  became white  and clear, and  the  hairdresser's
waves in her hair came undone.
     From the mirror a  naturally curly, black-haired woman of  about twenty
was looking  at the thirty-year-old Margarita, baring her  teeth and shaking
with laughter.
     Having laughed  her fill,  Margarita jumped out of her  bathrobe with a
single  leap, dipped freely  into the light, rich  cream,  and with vigorous
strokes  began rubbing it into the skin of her body.  It at once turned pink
and tingly. That instant, as if a needle  had been snatched from  her brain,
the ache  she  had felt in her temple all evening after the  meeting in  the
Alexandrovsky Garden subsided,  her leg  and arm  muscles grew stronger, and
then Margarita's body became weightless.
     She sprang up  and hung in  the air just above the rug, then was slowly
pulled down and descended.
     'What a cream! What a cream!' cried Margarita, throwing herself into an
armchair.
     The rubbings changed her not only externally. Now joy was boiling up in
her,  in all of her, in every particle of her body, which felt to  her  like
bubbles  prickling  her body all over.  Margarita felt herself free, free of
everything.  Besides,  she  understood  with  perfect clarity that  what was
happening was precisely  what her presentiment had been telling her  in  the
morning, and that she was leaving her house and her former life forever.
     But, even so, a thought  split off from this former life about the need
of  fulfilling just  one last  duty  before  the  start  of  something  new,
extraordinary, which was pulling her upwards into the air. And, naked as she
was, she ran  from her bedroom,  flying up in the air time and again, to her
husband's study, and, turning on the  light, rushed  to the desk. On a  page
torn from  a notebook, she  pencilled a  note quickly  and  in  big letters,
without any corrections:
     Forgive  me  and  forget me as soon as possible. I  am  leaving you for
ever. Do not  look for me, it  is  useless. I  have become a witch from  the
grief and calamities that have struck me. It's time for me to go. Farewell.
     Margarita.
     With  a  completely  unburdened soul, Margarita  came flying  into  the
bedroom, and after  her ran Natasha,  loaded  down with things. At once  all
these things - a wooden hanger with  a dress, lace  shawls,  dark blue satin
shoes on shoe-trees and a belt - all of it spilled on the floor, and Natasha
clasped her freed hands.
     'What, nice?' Margarita Nikolaevna cried loudly in a hoarse voice.
     'How can it be?' Natasha  whispered, backing away.  'How did you do it,
Margarita Nikolaevna.'
     'It's the cream! The cream, the cream!' answered Margarita, pointing to
the glittering golden box and turning around in front of the mirror.
     Natasha,  forgetting  the wrinkled  dress lying on the floor, ran up to
the pier-glass  and fixed her greedy,  lit-up  eyes on the  remainder of the
cream. Her lips were whispering something. She again turned to Margarita and
said with a sort of awe:
     'And,  oh, the  skin! The  skin! Margarita  Nikolaevna,  your  skin  is
glowing!'  But she  came to her senses, ran to the  dress, picked  it up and
began shaking it out.
     'Leave it! Leave it!'  Margarita  shouted to her. 'Devil take it! Leave
it all! Or,  no, keep it as  a  souvenir. As a  souvenir, I  tell  you. Take
everything in the room!'
     As if half-witted, the motionless Natasha  looked at Margarita for some
time, then hung on her neck, kissing her and crying out:
     'Satin! Glowing! Satin! And the eyebrows, the eyebrows!'
     `Take all  these rags, take the  perfume, drag  it  to your trunk, hide
it,' cried Margarita, 'but don't take  any valuables, they'll accuse  you of
stealing.'
     Natasha  grabbed and  bundled up  whatever  came to her hand - dresses,
shoes, stockings, underwear - and ran out of the bedroom.
     Just then from somewhere at the other  end of the  lane  a  thundering,
virtuoso waltz burst and flew out an open window,  and the chugging of a car
driving up to the gate was heard.
     `Azazello will call now!'  exclaimed  Margarita, listening to the waltz
spilling into the lane. 'He'll call! And the foreigner's not dangerous, yes,
I understand now that he's not dangerous!'
     There was  the noise of a  car driving away from the  front  gate.  The
garden gate banged, and steps were heard on the tiles of the path.
     'It's Nikolai Ivanovich, I recognize his footsteps,' thought Margarita.
     'I must do something funny and interesting in farewell.'
     Margarita tore the curtain open  and sat  sideways on  the window-sill,
her arms around her knees. Moonlight licked her from the right side.
     Margarita  raised  her head towards the moon and  made  a  pensive  and
poetic face. The steps tapped twice more, and then suddenly - silence. After
admiring  the moon  a little  longer, sighing  for  the sake  of  propriety,
Margarita  turned her head to the  garden and  indeed saw Nikolai Ivanovich,
who  lived on  the bottom floor of  the same house.  Moonlight  poured  down
brightly on  Nikolai Ivanovich.  He  was  sitting  on a bench, and there was
every  indication that he  had sunk on to  it suddenly. The pince-nez on his
face was somehow askew, and he was clutching his briefcase in his hands.
     'Ah, hello, Nikolai Ivanovich,' Margarita said in a melancholy voice.
     'Good evening! Coming back from a meeting?'
     Nikolai Ivanovich made no reply to that.
     'And  I,' Margarita  went on, leaning further out into the  garden, 'am
sitting alone, as you see, bored, looking  at the moon and listening  to the
waltz...'
     Margarita passed her left hand over her temple, straightening a  strand
of hair, then said crossly:
     That is  impolite, Nikolai Ivanovich! I'm still a woman after all! It's
boorish not to reply when someone is talking to you.'
     Nikolai Ivanovich, visible in  me  moonlight  to the last button on his
grey waistcoat,  to the last hair of his blond, wedge-shaped beard, suddenly
smiled a wild smile, rose  from  the bench, and,  apparently beside  himself
with embarrassment,  instead of taking off his  hat, waved  his briefcase to
the side and bent his knees as if about to break into a squatting dance.
     'Ah, what a boring type you are, Nikolai Ivanovich!' Margarita went on.
     'Generally, I'm so sick of  you all that I can't even tell you, and I'm
so happy to be parting with you! Well, go to the devil's dam!'
     Just  then, behind  Margarita's  back  in  the  bedroom, the  telephone
exploded.  Margarita  tore  from  the  window-sill  and, forgetting  Nikolai
Ivanovich, snatched the receiver.
     'Azazello speaking,'  came  from the receiver. 'Dear,  dear  Azazello!'
cried Margarita.
     `It's  time. Take off,' Azazello  spoke into the receiver, and it could
be heard in his tone that he liked Margarita's sincere and joyful impulse.
     'When you fly over the  gate, shout "Invisible!" Then fly over the city
a little, to get used to it, and after that head south, out of the city, and
straight for the river. You're expected!'
     Margarita hung up, and here something in the next room hobbled woodenly
and started beating  on  the door.  Margarita flung it open  and  a sweeping
broom,  bristles up, flew dancing into the  bedroom. It drummed on the floor
with its end, kicking and straining  towards the window.  Margarita squealed
with delight and jumped astride the broom. Only now did the thought flash in
the rider that amidst all this fracas she had forgotten  to get dressed. She
galloped  over to the bed and grabbed the first thing she found, some  light
blue shift. Waving it  like a banner, she flew out the window. And the waltz
over the garden struck up louder.
     From the window Margarita slipped down and saw Nikolai Ivanovich on the
bench. He seemed to have frozen to it and listened completely dumbfounded to
the shouting and  crashing coming from the lighted bedroom of  the  upstairs
tenants.
     'Farewell, Nikolai  Ivanovich!'  cried Margarita, capering in front  of
Nikolai Ivanovich.
     He  gasped and  crawled along the bench, pawing it with  his  hands and
knocking down his briefcase.
     'Farewell  for  ever! I'm  flying  away!'  Margarita shouted  above the
waltz. Here  she  realized  that  she  did not  need any shift,  and  with a
sinister guffaw threw  it over Nikolai Ivanovich's head. The blinded Nikolai
Ivanovich crashed from the bench on to the bricks of the path.
     Margarita  turned to  take  a  last look at  the house  where  she  had
suffered for so long, and saw in the blazing window Natasha's face distorted
with amazement.
     'Farewell, Natasha!' Margarita cried and reared up on the broom.
     'Invisible! Invisible!' she cried still louder, and,  flying  over  the
front gates, between the maple branches, which  lashed at her face, she flew
out into the lane. And after her flew the completely insane waltz.

        CHAPTER 21. Flight


     Invisible and free! Invisible and free! ...  After  flying down her own
lane, Margarita got into another that crossed the first at right angles.
     This patched up, darned, crooked  and long lane, with the lopsided door
of a kerosene shop where they sold  paraffin  by the cup and liquid  against
parasites in  flacons, she cut across in  an  instant, and here she realized
that, even while completely free and invisible, she still had to be at least
somewhat  reasonable  in  her  pleasure.  Having  slowed down  only  by some
miracle, she just  missed smashing herself to death against  an old lopsided
street light at the corner. Dodging it, Margarita clutched the broom tighter
and  flew more  slowly, studying the  electric  wires  and  the street signs
hanging across the sidewalk.
     The third lane led  straight to the Arbat. Here Margarita became  fully
accustomed to  controlling the broom,  realized that it obeyed the slightest
touch of her hands and  legs, and that, flying over the city, she had  to be
very attentive and not act up too much. Besides, in the lane  it had already
become abundantly clear that passers-by  did not see the  lady flier. No one
threw his head back, shouted 'Look! Look!' or dashed aside, no one shrieked,
swooned or guffawed with wild laughter.
     Margarita flew noiselessly, very slowly, and not high up, approximately
on second-floor level. But even with this slow flying,  just at the entrance
to the dazzlingly lit Arbat  she misjudged slightly and struck  her shoulder
against some illuminated  disc with an arrow on it. This  angered Margarita.
She reined in the obedient broom, flew a  little  aside, and then,  suddenly
hurling  herself  at  the  disc with the  butt of the broom,  smashed it  to
smithereens. Bits of glass  rained down with a crash, passers-by shied away,
a  whistle  came  from somewhere,  and Margarita,  having  accomplished this
unnecessary act, burst out laughing.
     'On the Arbat I must be more careful,' thought Margarita, 'everything's
in such a  snarl  here, you can't figure  it out.' She began dodging between
the wires. Beneath Margarita floated the roofs of buses, trams and cars, and
along the sidewalks, as it seemed to Margarita from above, floated rivers of
caps. From  these  rivers  little  streams branched off  and flowed into the
flaming maws of night-time shops.
     'Eh,  what  a mess!' Margarita thought  angrily.  'You can't  even turn
around here.'
     She  crossed  the Arbat, rose higher, to fourth-floor level, and,  past
the dazzlingly bright tubes on the  theatre  building at the corner, floated
into  a narrow lane with tall buildings. All  the windows in them were open,
and  everywhere  radio  music  came  from  the windows.  Out  of  curiosity,
Margarita peeked into  one of  them.  She saw  a kitchen. Two primuses  were
roaring on the range, and next to them stood two women with spoons in  their
hands, squabbling.
     'You should  turn  the toilet light  off  after  you,  that's what  I'm
telling you, Pelageya Petrovna,' said the woman before whom there  was a pot
with some sort of eatables steaming in it, 'or else we'll apply to  have you
evicted.'
     You're a  good  one yourself,' the  other woman answered.  `You're both
good  ones,' Margarita said loudly, clambering over the window-sill into the
kitchen.
     The two quarrelling women turned towards the voice and froze with their
dirty spoons  in their hands.  Margarita carefully reached out between them,
turned the knobs of both primuses,  and extinguished them. The  women gasped
and  opened their mouths.  But Margarita was already bored with  the kitchen
and flew out into the lane.
     Her  attention  was   attracted  by   the   magnificent   hulk   of  an
eight-storeyed, obviously just-constructed building at the end of it.
     Margarita  dropped down  and, alighting, saw  that  the  facade of  the
building was  covered in black marble, that the doors were wide, that behind
their glass could be glimpsed a  doorman's buttons and peaked cap with  gold
braid, and that over the door there was a gold inscription: 'Dramlit House'.
     Margarita squinted at the inscription, trying  to  figure  out what the
word 'Dramlit' might mean. Taking her broom under  her arm, Margarita walked
into the lobby, shoving the surprised doorman with the  door, and saw on the
wall  beside  the  elevator a huge black board  and on it,  written in white
letters,  apartment numbers  and  tenants'  names.  The  heading  `House  of
Dramatists and  Literary  Workers'  above the  list  provoked  a  suppressed
predatory scream in Margarita. Rising in the air, she greedily began to read
the last names: Khustov, Dvubratsky, Quant, Beskudnikov, Latunsky...
     'Latunsky!' shrieked Margarita. 'Latunsky! Why, he's the one ...'  he's
the one who ruined the master!'
     The  doorman at the entrance, even hopping with astonishment, his  eyes
rolled out, gazed at the black board, trying to  understand  the marvel: why
was the list of tenants suddenly shrieking?
     But by that time Margarita was already going impetuously up the stairs,
repeating in some sort of rapture:
     'Latunsky eighty-four... Latunsky eighty-four...'
     Here to the left - 82, to the right - 85, further up, to the left - 84!
     Here! And the name plate - '0. Latunsky'.
     Margarita jumped  off the broom, and her hot  soles  felt the  pleasant
coolness  of  the stone  landing.  Margarita rang once, twice.  But  no  one
opened.  Margarita  began  to  push the button harder  and  could  hear  the
jangling  it set off  in  Latunsky's apartment.  Yes, to his dying  day  the
inhabitant of  apartment no.84 on the eighth floor should be grateful to the
late Berlioz, chairman of Massolit, for  having fallen under a tram-car, and
that the memorial gathering had been appointed precisely for that evening.
     The critic  Latunsky was  born under a lucky star -  it  saved him from
meeting Margarita, who that Friday became a witch.
     No  one  opened  the  door.  Then  Margarita raced down at  full swing,
counting the floors, reached the bottom, burst out the door and, looking up,
counted and checked  the  floors from outside, guessing which precisely were
the windows of Latunsky's  apartment. Undoubtedly  they were  the  five dark
windows at the corner of the building on the eighth floor.  Convinced of it,
Margarita  rose into the  air and in a  few seconds was stepping through  an
open window into an unlit room, where only a narrow path from the moon shone
silver. Margarita ran down it, felt for the switch. A moment later the whole
apartment was lit up. The broom stood in a corner. After making sure that no
one was  home, Margarita  opened  the door to the stairs and checked whether
the name plate was there. The name plate  was in place. Margarita was  where
she wanted to be.
     Yes,  they  say  that  to  this  day  the  critic  Latunsky  rums  pale
remembering  that  terrible evening, and to this  day  he utters the name of
Berlioz  with veneration. It is totally unknown what dark and vile  criminal
job would  have marked this evening - returning from the kitchen,  Margarita
had a heavy hammer in her hands.
     Naked  and invisible,  the lady flier tried to control  and talk  sense
into herself; her  hands  trembled  with  impatience.  Taking  careful  aim,
Margarita struck at the keys of the grand  piano, and a first plaintive wail
passed  all  through the  apartment.  Becker's drawing-room  instrument, not
guilty of anything, cried out  frenziedly. Its  keys  caved in, ivory veneer
flew in all directions. The instrument howled, wailed, rasped and jangled.
     With the noise of a pistol  shot,  the  polished upper soundboard split
under  a hammer blow. Breathing hard, Margarita tore and mangled the strings
with  the hammer. Finally  getting tired, she left off and flopped  into  an
armchair to catch her breath.
     Water was roaring terribly in the bathroom, and in the kitchen as well.
     'Seems it's already overflowing on the floor...' Margarita thought, and
added aloud:
     'No point sitting around, however.'
     The stream was already running from the kitchen into the corridor.
     Splashing  barefoot  through  the water,  Margarita carried  buckets of
water from the kitchen to the  critic's study and emptied them into his desk
drawers.  Then,  after smashing the door of the bookcase  in  the same study
with her  hammer, she rushed to  the  bedroom. Shattering  the mirror on the
wardrobe, she took  out the critic's dress suit and drowned it in the tub. A
large bottle of ink, picked up in the study, she poured over the luxuriously
plumped-up double bed.
     The devastation she wrought afforded her a burning pleasure, and yet it
seemed to her all the while that the results came out somehow meagre.
     Therefore she  started doing whatever came along. She smashed  pots  of
ficus in the room with the grand piano. Before finishing that, she went back
to the bedroom, slashed the sheets with a kitchen knife, and broke the glass
on the framed photographs.  She felt no fatigue, only the sweat  poured from
her in streams.
     Just  then,   in  apartment  no.82,  below  Latunsky's  apartment,  the
housekeeper  of the dramatist Quant was having tea in the kitchen, perplexed
by  the clatter,  running and jangling coming  from above.  Raising her head
towards the ceiling, she suddenly saw  it  changing colour before  her  eyes
from white to some deathly blue. The spot was widening right in front of her
and drops suddenly  swelled out on it. For about two minutes the housekeeper
sat marvelling at  this phenomenon, until finally a real  rain began to fall
from  the ceiling, drumming on the floor. Here she  jumped  up,  put a  bowl
under the  stream,  which did not help at all, because the rain expanded and
began pouring down on the  gas stove and the table with dishes. Then, crying
out, Quant's  housekeeper ran from the apartment  to the  stairs and at once
the bell started ringing in Latunsky's apartment.
     Well, they're ringing ... Time  to be  off,' said Margarita. She sat on
the broom, listening to the female voice shouting through the keyhole:
     'Open up, open up! Dusya, open the door! Is your  water overflowing, or
what? We're being flooded!'
     Margarita  rose up  about  a  metre and hit  the chandelier.  Two bulbs
popped and pendants flew in all directions. The shouting through the keyhole
stopped, stomping was heard on the stairs.  Margarita  floated  through  the
window,  found herself outside it, swung lightly and hit  the glass with the
hammer. The  pane sobbed, and splinters went cascading down the marble-faced
wall.  Margarita flew  to the next window. Far  below, people began  running
about on the sidewalk, one of the two cars parked by the entrance honked and
drove off. Having finished with Latunsky's windows, Margarita floated to the
neighbour's  apartment. The blows became more  frequent, the lane was filled
with crashing and jingling. The doorman ran out of the main entrance, looked
up,  hesitated a  moment, evidently  not grasping at first what he ought  to
undertake, put the whistle to his lips, and started whistling furiously.  To
the  sound of  this whistle, Margarita, with  particular passion, demolished
the  last  window  on  the eighth floor,  dropped down  to  the seventh, and
started smashing the windows there.
     Weary of his prolonged idleness behind the glass doors of the entrance,
the doorman  put  his  whole  soul into  his whistling,  following Margarita
precisely  as  if he were her  accompanist. In the pauses as  she  flew from
window to  window, he  would  draw his breath, and  at  each of  Margarita's
strokes,  he would puff out his  cheeks and dissolve in whistling,  drilling
the night air right up to the sky.
     His  efforts,  combined with the efforts  of the  infuriated Margarita,
yielded  great results. There  was panic  in the house.  Those  windows left
intact were  flung  open, people's heads appeared  in them and  hid at once,
while the open windows, on the contrary, were being closed. In the buildings
across the street, against the lighted background of windows, there appeared
the dark silhouettes of people  trying to understand why the windows in  the
new Dramlit building were bursting for no reason at all.
     In  the lane people  ran  to  Dramlit House,  and  inside,  on all  the
stairways, there  was the stamping of people rushing about with no reason or
sense. Quant's housekeeper shouted to those running up the  stairs that they
were being  flooded, and she  was soon joined  by Khustov's housekeeper from
apartment no.80, located just below Quant's  apartment. At Khustov's  it was
pouring from the ceiling in  both the kitchen and  the  toilet. Finally,  in
Quant's kitchen  a huge slab of plaster fell from the ceiling, breaking  all
the  dirty dishes, after which came  a real downpour, the water gushing from
the grid of wet, hanging lath as if  from a bucket. Then on the steps of the
main entrance shouting began.
     Flying past  the  penultimate  window of  the  fourth  floor, Margarita
peeked in and saw a man who in  panic had pulled on  a gas mask. Hitting his
window with the hammer, Margarita  scared him off,  and he  disappeared from
the room.
     And unexpectedly the  wild  havoc ceased.  Slipping down  to the  third
floor,  Margarita peeked into the end window, covered by a thin, dark little
curtain. In the room a little lamp was  burning weakly under a shade.  In  a
small bed with net sides sat a boy of about four, listening timorously.
     There were no grown-ups in the room, evidently they had all run  out of
the apartment.
     They're breaking the windows,' the boy said and called: 'Mama!'
     No one answered, and then he said:
     'Mama, I'm afraid.'
     Margarita drew the little curtain aside and flew in.
     'I'm afraid,' the boy repeated, and trembled.
     'Don't  be afraid, don't be afraid, little one,' said Margarita, trying
to  soften her  criminal voice, grown husky  from the wind.  'It's some boys
breaking windows.'
     'With a slingshot?' the boy asked, ceasing to tremble.
     With a slingshot, with a slingshot,' Margarita  confirmed, 'and  you go
to sleep.'
     'It's Sitnik,' said the boy, "he's got a slingshot.'
     Well, of course it's he!'
     The boy looked slyly somewhere to the side and asked:
     'And where are you, ma'am?'
     'I'm nowhere,' answered Margarita, 'I'm your dream.'
     'I thought so,' said the boy.
     'Lie down now,' Margarita ordered, 'put your hand under your cheek, and
I'll go on being your dream.'
     'Well, be my dream, then,' the boy agreed, and at once lay down and put
his hand under his cheek.
     'I'll  tell you a  story,' Margarita  began, and placed her hot hand on
his cropped head. `Once there was a certain lady... And she had no children,
and generally no happiness either. And so  first she  cried for a long time,
and then she became wicked...' Margarita fell  silent and took away her hand
- the boy was asleep.
     Margarita quietly placed the hammer on the window-sill and flew out the
window. There was  turmoil  by the building.  On the asphalt pavement strewn
with  broken  glass,  people were running and shouting something.  Policemen
were  already  flashing  among  them.  Suddenly  a  bell  rang,  and  a  red
fire-engine with a ladder drove into the lane from the Arbat.
     But what followed no longer interested Margarita. Taking aim, so as not
to brush  against any wires, she  clutched her broom more tightly  and in  a
moment was high above the ill-fated house.  The lane beneath  her went askew
and plunged away. In place of it a mass of  roofs appeared under Margarita's
feet, criss-crossed at various angles by  shining paths. It all unexpectedly
went off to one side, and the strings of lights smeared and merged.
     Margarita made one more spurt  and the whole mass of roofs fell through
the earth,  and in place of it a  lake of quivering electric lights appeared
below, and  this  lake  suddenly  rose up vertically  and then appeared over
Margarita's head,  while the moon flashed under her feet. Realizing that she
had  flipped  over, Margarita  resumed a normal position and, glancing back,
saw that there was no longer any lake, and that there behind her only a pink
glow remained on  the horizon.  That,  too, disappeared a second  later, and
Margarita saw that she was alone with the moon flying  above and to the left
of  her.  Margarita's  hair had long been  standing up in  a  shock, and the
whistling moonlight  bathed  her body. Seeing two rows of widespread  lights
merge into two unbroken fiery lines, seeing how quickly they vanished behind
her, Margarita realized that she  was flying at  an  enormous speed and  was
amazed that she was not out of breath.
     After  a few seconds, a new glow of electric lights flared up far below
in the  earthly blackness and  hurtled  under the  flying woman's  feet, but
immediately  spun away like  a  whirligig and fell into  the  earth.  A  few
seconds later - exactly the same phenomenon.
     'Towns! Towns!' cried Margarita.
     Two  or three times after that she  saw  dully gleaming sabres lying in
open black sheaths below her and realized that these were rivers.
     Turning her head  up and to  the left, the flying woman admired the way
the  moon  madly raced back over her towards  Moscow,  and at the  same time
strangely stayed in its  place, so  that  there could be  clearly seen on it
something  mysterious, dark  - a dragon, or a little  humpbacked  horse, its
sharp muzzle turned to the abandoned city.
     Here the thought came to Margarita that, in fact, there was no need for
her to drive  her broom so furiously, that she was depriving herself of  the
opportunity of seeing  anything properly, of  revelling properly in her  own
flight. Something told her that she would be waited for in the place she was
flying to,  and  that there  was no need  for her to  become bored with this
insane speed and height.
     Margarita turned the broom's bristles  forward,  so  that its tail rose
up, and, slowing way  down, headed right for the earth. This downward glide,
as on an airy sled, gave her the greatest pleasure. The  earth  rose to meet
her, and in its hitherto formless  black density  the charms  and secrets of
the earth  on a moonlit night  revealed themselves. The  earth was coming to
her, and Margarita was already enveloped in the scent of greening forests.
     Margarita was flying just above the mists of a dewy meadow, then over a
pond. Under Margarita sang a chorus of frogs, and from somewhere  far  away,
stirring her heart deeply for some reason, came the noise of  a  train. Soon
Margarita saw it.  It was crawling slowly along like a caterpillar, spraying
sparks  into the air. Going ahead of it, Margarita passed  over yet  another
watery mirror, in which a second moon floated under her  feet,  dropped down
lower still  and went  on, her  feet nearly touching  the tops  of the  huge
pines.
     A heavy  noise of ripping  air came from behind and  began  to overtake
Margarita. To this noise  of  something flying like a cannon ball  a woman's
guffaw was gradually added, audible for  many miles around. Margarita looked
back  and saw some  complex  dark object  catching up  with  her. As it drew
nearer to Margarita, it became more distinct - a mounted flying person could
be  seen. And  finally  it became quite distinct: slowing down, Natasha came
abreast of Margarita.
     Completely naked,  her dishevelled hair flying  in  the  air,  she flew
astride a fat hog, who  was clutching  a briefcase in his front hoofs, while
his hind hoofs desperately threshed the  air.  Occasionally  gleaming in the
moonlight, then  fading,  the  pince-nez that had fallen  off his  nose flew
beside the hog on  a string, and  the hog's  hat kept sliding down  over his
eyes.  Taking  a  close  look,  Margarita  recognized  the  hog  as  Nikolai
Ivanovich, and then her laughter rang out over the forest, mingled with  the
laughter of Natasha.
     'Natashka!' Margarita shouted piercingly. 'You rubbed yourself with the
cream?'
     'Darling!!'  Natasha  replied, awakening the sleeping pine  forest with
her shout. 'My French queen, I smeared it on him, too, on his bald head!'
     'Princess!' the hog shouted tearfully, galloping along with his rider.
     'Darling!   Margarita   Nikolaevna!'   cried  Natasha,  riding   beside
Margarita, `I confess, I took the cream! We, too, want to live and fly!
     Forgive me,  my sovereign lady, I won't go back, not for  anything! Ah,
it's good,  Margarita Nikolaevna!  ... He  propositioned me,' Natasha  began
jabbing  her   finger  into   the  neck   of   the  abashedly  huffing  hog,
'propositioned  me! What was  it you called me,  eh?'  she  shouted, leaning
towards the hog's ear.
     'Goddess!' howled the hog, 'I can't fly so fast! I may  lose  important
papers, Natalya Prokofyevna, I protest!'
     'Ah, devil  take you and your  papers!'  Natasha shouted with a  brazen
guffaw.
     'Please,  Natalya Prokofyevna,  someone  may hear us!'  the hog  yelled
imploringly.
     Flying beside Margarita,  Natasha laughingly told her what happened  in
the house after Margarita Nikolaevna flew off over the gates.
     Natasha confessed that, without ever touching any of the things she had
been given, she threw off her clothes, rushed to the cream,  and immediately
smeared  herself with it. The  same  thing  happened with  her as  with  her
mistress.  Just as  Natasha, laughing  with joy,  was  revelling in  her own
magical  beauty  before the mirror,  the door opened  and Nikolai  Ivanovich
appeared before her. He was agitated; in  his hands he was holding Margarita
Nikolaevna's  shift  and his  own hat and briefcase. Seeing Natasha, Nikolai
Ivanovich was dumbfounded.  Getting some  control  of himself, all red as  a
lobster,  he announced that he felt  it was  his  duty to pick up the little
shift and bring it personally...
     The things he  said, the blackguard!' Natasha shrieked and laughed. The
things  he said, the  things he tempted me to do! The money he promised!  He
said Klavdia Petrovna would never learn of it. Well, speak, am I lying?'
     Natasha shouted to the hog, who only turned his muzzle away abashedly.
     In the bedroom, carried away with her own mischief, Natasha dabbed some
cream on Nikolai Ivanovich and was herself struck dumb with astonishment.
     The respectable ground-floor tenant's face shrank to a pig's snout, and
his hands and feet acquired little  hoofs. Looking at himself in the mirror,
Nikolai Ivanovich let out a wild and desperate howl, but it  was already too
late. A few seconds later, saddled up, he was flying out of Moscow to  devil
knows where, sobbing with grief.
     `I dem