you like,
but not inattention, they'll sicken from that ...'
     Here  Margarita,  accompanied by Koroviev and Behemoth, stepped  out of
the room with the pool into total darkness.
     'I, I,' whispered the cat, 'I give the signal!'
     'Go ahead!' Koroviev replied from the darkness.
     The ball!!!' shrieked the cat piercingly, and just then Margarita cried
out and shut her eyes for a few seconds. The ball fell on her all at once in
the form  of light, and, with it, of sound and smell. Taken under the arm by
Koroviev,   Margarita  saw  herself  in  a  tropical  forest.  Red-breasted,
green-tailed   parrots   fluttered  from  liana  to  liana  and   cried  out
deafeningly:  'Delighted!'  But  the  forest soon  ended, and  its bathhouse
stuffiness changed  at  once  to the  coolness of a ballroom with columns of
some yellowish,  sparkling stone. This  ballroom,  just like the forest, was
completely empty, except  for some naked negroes  with silver bands on their
heads who  were standing  by  the columns.  Their faces turned a dirty brown
from  excitement when Margarita  flew into the ballroom with her retinue, in
which Azazello showed up from somewhere. Here Koroviev let go of Margarita's
arm and whispered:
     'Straight to the tulips.'
     A  low wall of  white  tulips had grown  up in  front of Margarita, and
beyond  it she saw numberless lamps under little shades  and behind them the
white chests and black  shoulders of tailcoaters.  Then Margarita understood
where the  sound of  the ball was coming from.  The roar of trumpets crashed
down on her, and the soaring of violins that burst from under it doused  her
body as if with blood. The orchestra  of about a hundred  and fifty men  was
playing a polonaise.
     The  tailcoated  man  hovering  over  the  orchestra  paled  on  seeing
Margarita,  smiled, and  suddenly, with a  sweep of his arms,  got the whole
orchestra  to  its  feet.  Not  interrupting the  music  for  a moment,  the
orchestra, standing, doused Margarita with sound. The man over the orchestra
turned from  it and bowed deeply, spreading his arms  wide,  and  Margarita,
smiling, waved her hand to him.
     'No, not enough, not enough,' whispered  Koroviev, 'he won't  sleep all
night. Call out to him: "Greetings to you, waltz king! [1]'
     Margarita  cried  it out, and marvelled that her voice, full as a bell,
was heard over the howling of the orchestra. The  man started with happiness
and put  his left hand to  his chest, while the right went  on brandishing a
white baton at the orchestra.
     'Not enough, not enough,' whispered Koroviev, 'look to the left, to the
first  violins,  and  nod so  that each  one thinks  you've  recognized  him
individually. There are only world celebrities here. Nod  to that one ... at
the  first  stand, that's  Vieuxtemps!  [2]  ...  There,  very good...  Now,
onward!'
     'Who is the conductor?' Margarita asked, flying off.
     'Johann Strauss!' cried  the cat. 'And they can hang me from a liana in
a tropical forest if such an  orchestra ever  played at any ball! I  invited
them! And, note, not one got sick or declined!'
     In the next  room there were no columns.  Instead there  stood walls of
red,  pink  and milk-white roses on one side,  and on  the other  a  wall of
Japanese  double  camellias.  Between  these  walls  fountains  spurted  up,
hissing, and bubbly champagne seethed in three pools, the first of which was
transparent violet, the second ruby, the third crystal. Next to them negroes
in  scarlet  headbands dashed about, filling flat cups  from the  pools with
silver  dippers.  The  pink  wall  had  a gap in  it, where a man  in a  red
swallowtail coat was flailing away on  a  platform. Before  him thundered an
unbearably loud jazz  band. As soon as the conductor saw Margarita,  he bent
before her  so  that his hands touched the  floor, then straightened  up and
cried piercingly:
     'Hallelujah!'
     He slapped himself on the  knee - one! - then  criss-cross on the other
knee - two! -  then snatched a cymbal from the hands of the end musician and
banged it on a column.
     As she flew off, Margarita saw only that the virtuoso jazzman, fighting
against the polonaise blowing  in  Margarita's back, was beating his jazzmen
on the heads with the cymbal while they cowered in comic fright.
     Finally they flew out on to the  landing  where, as Margarita realized,
she had  been met in the dark by Koroviev with  his little lamp. Now on this
landing the light pouring from clusters of crystal grapes blinded the eye.
     Margarita was  put in  place,  and  under her left arm she found a  low
amethyst column.
     'You may rest  your arm  on it if it  becomes too  difficult,' Koroviev
whispered.
     Some black man threw a pillow under Margarita's feet embroidered with a
golden poodle, and she, obedient to  someone's hands, bent her right leg  at
the knee and placed her foot on it.
     Margarita tried to  look around. Koroviev and Azazello stood beside her
in  formal  poses.  Next to Azazello stood another three young  men, vaguely
reminding  Margarita of Abaddon. It  blew cold  in her back. Looking  there,
Margarita saw bubbly wine spurt from the  marble wall  behind her  and  pour
into a  pool of  ice. At her left foot she felt something warm and furry. It
was Behemoth.
     Margarita was high  up, and a  grandiose stairway  covered with  carpet
descended from her feet. Below, so far away that it was as if Margarita were
looking the wrong way  through binoculars, she saw a vast front hall with an
absolutely  enormous  fireplace,  into the  cold and  black  maw  of which a
five-ton  truck could  easily have driven. The front hall  and stairway,  so
flooded  with light that it hurt the eyes, were empty. The sound of trumpets
now came to  Margarita from far away. Thus they stood motionless for about a
minute.
     'But where are the guests?' Margarita asked Koroviev.
     'They'll come, Queen, they'll  come, they'll come soon enough. There'll
be no lack  of  them. And, really, I'd rather go and chop  wood than receive
them here on the landing.'
     'Chop wood -  hah!' picked up the garrulous cat. 'I'd rather  work as a
tram conductor, and there's no worse job in the world than that!'
     `Everything must be made ready  in advance, Queen,' explained Koroviev,
his eye gleaming through the broken monocle. "There's nothing more loathsome
than when the first guest to arrive  languishes, not knowing what to do, and
his lawful beldame nags at him in a whisper for having come before everybody
else. Such balls should be thrown in the trash, Queen.'
     'Definitely in the trash,' confirmed the cat.
     'No more than ten seconds till  midnight,'  said Koroviev. "It'll start
presently.'
     Those ten seconds seemed extremely  long to Margarita.  Obviously  they
had  already passed  and precisely nothing had happened. But  here something
suddenly  crashed  downstairs in the huge fireplace, and from  it  leaped  a
gallows with some  half-decayed remains dangling from it. The  remains  fell
from the rope, struck the floor, and from it  leaped  a handsome dark-haired
man in a tailcoat  and patent leather shoes. A half-rotten little coffin ran
out of the fireplace,  its lid fell  off, and another remains tumbled out of
it. The handsome  man gallantly leaped over  to  it and offered  it his bent
arm. The  second  remains put itself together into  a fidgety woman in black
shoes, with black feathers on her  head, and then the man and the woman both
hastened up the stairs.
     The first!' exclaimed Koroviev. 'Monsieur Jacques [3] and his spouse. I
commend to  you,  Queen, one  of  the most interesting  of men. A  confirmed
counterfeiter, a traitor to his  government,  but a rather  good  alchemist.
Famous,'  Koroviev  whispered  in Margarita's  ear, 'for having  poisoned  a
king's mistress. That doesn't happen to everyone! Look how handsome he is!'
     The pale Margarita, her mouth open,  watched as both gallows and coffin
disappeared into some side passage in the front hall.
     'Delighted!' the cat yelled right into  the face of Monsieur Jacques as
he came up the stairs.
     At that moment a headless skeleton with a torn-off arm emerged from the
fireplace, struck the ground, and turned into a man in a tailcoat.
     Monsieur  Jacques's  spouse  was  already  going  on  one  knee  before
Margarita and, pale with excitement, was kissing Margarita's foot.
     `Queen...' Monsieur Jacques's spouse murmured.
     The queen is delighted!' cried Koroviev.
     `Queen...' the handsome Monsieur Jacques said quietly.
     We're delighted,' howled the cat.
     The  young men, Azazello's companions,  smiling  lifeless  but  affable
smiles,  were already shouldering  Monsieur  Jacques  and his  spouse to one
side, towards the  cups of  champagne that the  negroes  were  holding.  The
single man in the tailcoat was coming up the stairs at a run.
     'Earl  Robert,'[4]  Koroviev  whispered  to Margarita, 'interesting  as
ever.  Note how funny, Queen: the reverse case, this one was a queen's lover
and poisoned his wife. 'We're very glad, Earl,' cried Behemoth.
     Out of the fireplace,  bursting  open and falling apart,  three coffins
tumbled  one  after another, then came someone in a black  mantle, whom  the
next one  to run out of  the black  maw stabbed in the back with a knife.  A
stifled cry was heard from below.  An almost entirely  decomposed corpse ran
out of the  fireplace.  Margarita shut  her eyes, and someone's hand  held a
flacon of  smelling  salts  to her  nose.  Margarita  thought the  hand  was
Natasha's.
     The stairway began to fill up. Now on each step there were tailcoaters,
looking quite alike from  afar, and naked women with them, who differed from
each other only in the colour of their shoes and  of the  feathers  on their
heads.
     Coming towards  Margarita,  hobbling, a strange wooden boot on her left
foot, was  a lady with  nunnishly lowered eyes, thin and modest, and  with a
wide green band around her neck for some reason.
     'Who is this ... green one?' Margarita asked mechanically.
     'A most  charming and respectable lady,' whispered Koroviev, 'I commend
her  to  you:  Madame  Tofana.  [5] Extremely popular  among  young,  lovely
Neapolitans, as well as the ladies  of Palermo, especially those of them who
had grown weary of their  husbands.  It does happen, Queen,  that one  grows
weary of one's husband...'
     'Yes,' Margarita replied in a hollow voice, smiling at the same time to
two  tailcoaters who bent before her  one after the other,  kissing her knee
and hand.
     'And so,' Koroviev managed to whisper to Margarita and at the same time
to cry out to someone: 'Duke! A glass of champagne? I'm delighted! ...
     Yes, so then, Madame Tofana entered  into  the situation of these  poor
women and sold them some sort of water in little vials. The wife poured this
water into her spouse's  soup, he ate it, thanked her for being so nice, and
felt  perfectly well.  True,  a few  hours later he would begin to get  very
thirsty, then go  to bed,  and a day later the lovely Neapolitan who had fed
her husband soup would be free as the spring breeze.'
     'But what's that on her foot?' asked Margarita, tirelessly offering her
hand to the  guests who  came ahead  of the hobbling Madame Tofana. 'And why
that green band? A withered neck?'
     'Delighted, Prince!' cried Koroviev, and at  the same time whispered to
Margarita:  `A beautiful neck,  but  an unpleasantness  happened to  her  in
prison. What she has on her foot, Queen, is a Spanish boot, [6] and the band
is explained this way: when the prison guards learned that some five hundred
ill-chosen husbands had departed Naples and Palermo for ever, in the heat of
the moment they strangled Madame Tofana in prison.'
     'How  happy I  am,  kindest Queen, that  the high honour has fallen  to
me...' Tofana whispered nunnishly, trying to lower herself to one knee - the
Spanish boot hindered her. Koroviev and Behemoth helped her up.
     'I'm very glad,'  Margarita answered her, at the same time offering her
hand to others.
     Now a steady  stream  was coming up the  stairs  from below.  Margarita
could  no longer see  what  was going on in the front hall. She mechanically
raised and lowered her hand and smiled uniformly to  the guests. There was a
hum in the air on the landing; from the  ballrooms Margarita had left, music
could be heard, like the sea.
     `But this  one is a boring  woman,' Koroviev  no longer  whispered, but
spoke aloud, knowing that in the hubbub of voices no one would hear him.
     'She  adores  balls,  and  keeps  dreaming  of  complaining  about  her
handkerchief.'
     Margarita's glance picked out among those  coming up the woman at  whom
Koroviev  was pointing. She was young, about twenty, of remarkably beautiful
figure, but with somehow restless and importunate eyes.
     'What handkerchief?' asked Margarita.
     `She has a  chambermaid assigned to her,' explained Koroviev,  'who for
thirty years  has been putting a handkerchief on her night  table during the
night. She wakes up and the handkerchief is there. She's tried burning it in
the stove and drowning it in the river, but nothing helps.'
     'What handkerchief?' whispered Margarita, raising and lowering her arm.
     'A blue-bordered one. The thing is that when she worked in  a cafe, the
owner once invited her to the pantry, and nine  months  later she gave birth
to a  boy, took him to the forest, stuffed  the handkerchief into his mouth,
and then buried the boy in  the ground. At the trial she said she had no way
of feeding the child.'
     `And where is the owner of the cafe?' asked Margarita. `Queen,' the cat
suddenly creaked from below,  'what,  may I  ask, does the owner have to  do
with it? It wasn't he who smothered the infant in the forest!'
     Margarita, without ceasing to smile and proffer her right hand, dug the
sharp nails of the left into Behemoth's ear and whispered to him:
     `If  you,  scum,  allow  yourself  to  interfere  in  the  conversation
again...'
     Behemoth squeaked in a not very ball-like fashion and rasped:
     'Queen  ...  the ear will  get swollen ... why spoil  the  ball  with a
swollen ear? ... I was speaking  legally, from the legal point of view ... I
say no more, I say no more. Consider me not a cat but a post, only let go of
my ear!'
     Margarita  released his ear,  and  the  importunate,  gloomy eyes  were
before her.
     'I am happy, Queen-hostess, to be invited to the great ball of the full
moon!'
     'And I am glad  to see you,' Margarita answered her, 'very glad. Do you
like champagne?'
     `What  are  you  doing,  Queen?!'  Koroviev   cried   desperately   but
soundlessly in Margarita's ear. There'll be a traffic jam!'
     'Yes,  I do,' the woman  said imploringly, and suddenly began repeating
mechanically: 'Frieda, [7] Frieda, Frieda! My name is Frieda, Queen!'
     'Get  drunk  tonight,  Frieda, and don't  think  about anything,'  said
Margarita.
     Frieda reached out both arms to Margarita, but  Koroviev  and  Behemoth
very adroitly took her under the arms and she blended into the crowd.
     Now people were coming in  a solid wall  from below, as if storming the
landing  where  Margarita  stood.  Naked  women's  bodies  came  up  between
tailcoated men.  Their swarthy,  white, coffee-bean-coloured, and altogether
black  bodies  floated towards  Margarita.  In  their  hair  -  red,  black,
chestnut, light  as  flax - precious  stones  glittered and danced, spraying
sparkles  into  the  flood  of light. And as  if someone  had sprinkled  the
storming column of men with droplets of light,  diamond  studs sprayed light
from  their chests. Every  second now  Margarita felt  lips touch her  knee,
every  second she held  out her  hand  to be kissed, her face was contracted
into a fixed mask of greeting.
     'I'm delighted,'  Koroviev sang  monotonously, 'we're delighted ... the
queen is delighted ...'
     The queen is delighted...' Azazello echoed nasally behind her back.
     'I'm delighted!' the cat kept exclaiming.
     The  marquise  ...'[8]  muttered  Koroviev, `poisoned  her  father, two
brothers and two sisters for the inheritance ... The queen is delighted! ...
Madame Minkin ...[9] Ah, what a  beauty! A bit  nervous. Why bum the  maid's
face  with  the  curling-irons?  Of  course, in  such  conditions  one  gets
stabbed...  The queen is delighted!  ... Queen, one second of attention! The
emperor  Rudolf  [10]  - sorcerer  and alchemist... Another alchemist  - got
hanged  ...  Ah, here she  is!  Ah, what  a  wonderful brothel  she  ran  in
Strasbourg!  ... We're  delighted! ... A Moscow dressmaker," we all love her
for  her inexhaustible fantasy ...  She kept  a shop and invented a terribly
funny trick: drilled two round holes in the wall ...'
     'And the ladies didn't know?' asked Margarita.
     'Every one  of them knew,  Queen,'  answered  Koroviev. 'Delighted! ...
This  twenty-year-old  boy  was  distinguished  from  childhood  by  strange
qualities, a dreamer and an eccentric.  A girl fell in love with him, and he
went and sold her to a brothel...'
     A river came streaming from below,  and there was no end to this  river
in  sight. Its source - the enormous fireplace  - continued to feed it. Thus
one hour passed and a second commenced. Here Margarita began to notice  that
her chain had  become heavier than  before. Something strange also  happened
with her  arm. Now, before  raising it,  Margarita had to  wince. Koroviev's
interesting  observations ceased  to amuse Margarita.  Slant-eyed  Mongolian
faces, white faces and black became undifferentiated  to her, they merged at
times, and the air between them  would for some reason begin to  tremble and
flow. A sharp pain, as if  from a needle, suddenly pierced Margarita's right
arm, and,  clenching  her teeth,  she  rested her  elbow  on the post.  Some
rustling,  as  if from wings  against the  walls,  was now  coming  from the
ballroom, and it was  clear that unprecedented hordes of guests were dancing
there,  and it seemed to Margarita  that even the massive marble, mosaic and
crystal floors of this prodigious room were pulsing rhythmically.
     Neither Gaius Caesar Caligula [12] nor Messalina"  interested Margarita
any longer, nor did any of the kings, dukes, cavaliers, suicides, poisoners,
gallowsbirds,  procuresses,   prison  guards  and   sharpers,  executioners,
informers,  traitors,  madmen,  sleuths,  seducers.  All their  names became
jumbled  in her head, the  faces stuck  together into one huge  pancake, and
only a single  face lodged itself painfully in her memory - the face, framed
in a truly fiery beard, of Maliuta Skuratov. [14]
     Margarita's legs kept giving way, she was afraid of bursting into tears
at any moment.  The worst suffering was caused by  her right knee, which was
being kissed. It became swollen, the skin turned blue, even though Natasha's
hand appeared  by this  knee several  times with  a sponge, wiping  it  with
something  fragrant. At the end of  the third hour, Margarita  glanced  down
with completely  desperate eyes  and gave  a joyful start -  the  stream  of
guests was thinning out.
     'Balls always assemble according  to the  same laws,  Queen,' whispered
Koroviev. 'Presently the wave will begin to  subside. I swear we're enduring
the final minutes. Here's the group  of revellers  from Brocken, they always
come last. Yes, here  they are. Two drunken vampires ... that's all? Ah, no,
here's one more ... no, two!'[15]
     The last two guests were coming up the stairs!
     'It's some new one,' Koroviev was saying, squinting through his lens.
     'Ah,  yes,  yes.  Azazello  visited  him  once  and,  over the  cognac,
whispered  some  advice  to him  on  how  to get rid of a certain  man whose
exposures he was extremely afraid of. And so he told an acquaintance who was
dependent on him to spray the walls of the office with poison ...'
     'What's his name?' asked Margarita.
     'Ah, really, I myself don't know yet,' Koroviev replied, 'we'11 have to
ask Azazello.'
     'And who is with him?'
     'Why,  that  same  efficient  subordinate  of  his.  Delighted!'  cried
Koroviev to the last two.
     The stairway was empty. They waited a little longer as a precaution.
     But no one else came from the fireplace.
     A  second  later,  without  knowing how  it happened,  Margarita  found
herself  in the  same room with the pool, and  there, bursting into tears at
once from the pain in her arm and leg, she collapsed right on the floor. But
Hella and Natasha, comforting her, again drew  her  under the bloody shower,
again massaged her body, and Margarita revived.
     "There's  more,  there's  more,  Queen   Margot,'  whispered  Koroviev,
appearing beside her. 'You must fly around the rooms, so that the honourable
guests don't feel they've been abandoned.'
     And once  more Margarita  flew  out of  the  room with the pool. On the
stage behind the tulips, where the waltz  king's orchestra had been playing,
there now  raged an ape jazz band. A huge gorilla with shaggy side-whiskers,
a trumpet in his hand, capering heavily, was doing the conducting.
     Orang-utans sat  in a row  blowing on shiny  trumpets. Perched on their
shoulders were merry chimpanzees with concertinas.
     Two  hamadryads with  manes  like lions played grand  pianos, but these
grand pianos were not heard  amidst the thundering, squeaking and booming of
saxophones,  fiddles  and  drums  in  the  paws  of  gibbons,  mandrills and
marmosets. On the  mirror floor a countless number of couples, as if merged,
amazing in the deftness and cleanness of their movements, all turning in the
same direction, swept on like a wall threatening to clear away everything in
its  path.  Live satin butterflies  bobbed above  the heads  of  the dancing
hordes,  flowers  poured  down from  the  ceiling.  In the  capitals of  the
columns, each  time the electricity went off,  myriads of  fireflies lit up,
and marsh-lights floated in the air.
     Then Margarita found herself  in a room with  a pool of  monstrous size
bordered  by a colonnade. A giant black Neptune spouted a  wide  pink stream
from his  maw.  A  stupefying smell of  champagne rose from the  pool.  Here
unconstrained  merriment held sway. Ladies, laughing, gave their handbags to
their  cavaliers or the negroes who rushed about with towels in their hands,
and with a cry dived swallow-like into  the pool. Foamy columns shot up. The
crystal bottom of  the pool shone with light from below  that broke  through
the density  of  the wine, and  in it  the silvery swimming  bodies could be
seen.  The ladies  got  out  of  the  pool completely  drunk. Loud  laughter
resounded under the columns, booming like the jazz band.
     All that was  remembered from this turmoil  was the  completely drunken
face  of a woman with senseless and, even in their senselessness,  imploring
eyes, and only one name - Frieda - was recalled.
     Margarita's head began to spin  from the smell of the wine, and she was
about to leave when the cat arranged a number in the pool that detained her.
     Behemoth performed  some  magic  by  Neptune's  maw, and  at  once  the
billowing  mass of  champagne,  hissing  and  gurgling,  left  the pool, and
Neptune began spewing out a stream  neither glittering nor foaming but  of a
dark-yellow  colour. The ladies - shrieking and screaming 'Cognac!' - rushed
from the pool-side and hid behind the columns. In a few seconds the pool was
filled, and the  cat, turning  three  times  in  the  air, dropped  into the
heaving cognac.  He crawled out, spluttering, his bow-tie  limp, the gilding
on his whiskers gone, along with the opera  glasses. Only one woman dared to
follow Behemoth's example  -  that  same  frolicsome  dressmaker,  with  her
cavalier,  an unknown  young  mulatto. The  two  threw  themselves  into the
cognac, but  here Koroviev took  Margarita under the  arm and they  left the
bathers.
     It seemed to Margarita that she flew somewhere, where she saw mountains
of oysters in  huge stone  basins. Then  she flew  over  a glass floor  with
infernal  furnaces burning under it  and devilish white cooks  darting among
them. Then  somewhere, already ceasing to comprehend anything, she  saw dark
cellars where some sort of lamps burned, where girls served meat sizzling on
red-hot  coals, where her health was drunk from big mugs. Then she saw polar
bears playing  concertinas  and dancing the Kamarinsky [16] on a platform. A
salamander-conjurer [17] who  did not  burn in the fireplace ... And for the
second time her strength began to ebb.
     'One last appearance,' Koroviev  whispered to  her anxiously, `and then
we're free!'
     Accompanied by Koroviev, she again found herself  in the ballroom,  but
now  there  was  no  dancing in  it, and the  guests in a numberless  throng
pressed back between the columns, leaving the middle of the room open.
     Margarita did not  remember who helped her to  get  up on the dais that
appeared in the  middle of this  open space in the  room. When she was up on
it,  to her own  amazement, she  heard a clock  strike  midnight  somewhere,
though by her reckoning it was long past. At the last  stroke  of the clock,
which came from no one knew where, silence fell on the crowd of guests.
     Then  Margarita saw  Woland  again. He walked in surrounded by Abaddon,
Azazello and several others who resembled Abaddon - dark-haired and young.
     Now Margarita saw that opposite her dais another  had been prepared for
Woland. But he did not make use of it. What struck Margarita was that Woland
came out for this last great appearance at the ball looking just the same as
he had looked in the bedroom. The same dirty, patched shirt [18] hung on his
shoulders, his feet were in  worn-out bedroom  slippers. Woland had a sword,
but he used this bare sword as a cane, leaning on it.
     Limping,  Woland  stopped  at his  dais,  and immediately  Azazello was
before him with a platter in his hands, and  on this platter Margarita saw a
man's severed head with the front teeth knocked out. Total silence continued
to  reign,  broken only once by  the  far-off sound, inexplicable  under the
circumstances, of a doorbell, coming as if from the front hall.
     "Mikhail Alexandrovich,' Woland  addressed the head in a low voice, and
then the slain man's eyelids rose, and on the  dead face Margarita saw, with
a shudder, living eyes filled with thought and suffering.
     'Everything came to pass, did it not?' Woland went on, looking into the
head's eyes.  "The head  was  cut  off by a woman, the meeting  did not take
place, and I am living in your apartment. That is a  fact.  And fact is  the
most stubborn thing in the world. But we are now interested in what follows,
and not in  this already  accomplished fact. You have  always been an ardent
preacher of the  theory that, on the cutting off of his head, life ceases in
a man, he turns  to  ashes and goes into non-being. I have the  pleasure  of
informing you, in the presence of my guests,  though they serve  as proof of
quite a different theory, that your theory is both solid and clever.
     However, one  theory is as  good  as another.  There is also one  which
holds that it will be given to each according to his faith. [19] Let it come
true!  You  go into non-being,  and  from the cup  into which  you are to be
transformed, I will joyfully drink to being!'
     Woland  raised  his  sword. Straight away the flesh of the head  turned
dark and shrivelled, then fell off in pieces, the eyes disappeared, and soon
Margarita  saw on the  platter  a yellowish  skull with emerald  eyes, pearl
teeth and a golden foot. The lid opened on a hinge.
     `Right  this   second,  Messire,'  said  Koroviev,  noticing   Woland's
questioning look, 'he'll appear before you. In this sepulchral silence I can
hear the creaking of his patent leather shoes and the clink of the goblet he
has just set down on the table, having drunk champagne for the last time  in
his life. Here he is.'
     A solitary new guest was entering the room, heading towards Woland.
     Outwardly he did  not differ  in any  way from  the numerous other male
guests,  except  for  one  thing:  this guest  was  literally  reeling  with
agitation, which could be seen  even from afar. Flushed  spots burned on his
cheeks, and his eyes  darted about in total alarm. The guest was dumbstruck,
and that was  perfectly natural:  he was astounded by everything, and  above
all, of course, by Woland's attire.
     However, the guest was met with the utmost kindness.
     'Ah, my  dearest Baron Meigel,'  Woland, smiling affably, addressed the
guest,  whose eyes were popping  out of his head. `I'm  happy  to commend to
you,' Woland turned to the other guests, 'the most esteemed Baron Meigel, an
employee of  the Spectacles Commission, in charge of acquainting  foreigners
with places of interest in the capital.'
     Here Margarita froze, because she recognized this  Meigel. She had come
across him several times in Moscow theatres and restaurants. 'Excuse me ...'
thought Margarita, 'but that means - what - that he's also dead? ...'
     But the matter straight away clarified itself.
     'The dear  baron,' Woland  went  on, smiling joyfully, 'was so charming
that, having learned  of my  arrival  in  Moscow,  he  rang  me  up at once,
offering his services along the line  of his expertise, that is, acquainting
people with places of interest. It goes  without saying that  I was happy to
invite him here.'
     Just  then Margarita  saw  Azazello hand the platter  with the skull to
Koroviev.
     'Ah, yes,  incidentally,  Baron,'  Woland  said,  suddenly lowering his
voice intimately,  'rumours have spread about  your extreme  curiosity. They
say  that,  combined  with your  no  less  developed talkativeness,  it  was
beginning  to attract general  attention. What's  more,  wicked tongues have
already dropped the word - a stool-pigeon and a spy. And, what's still more,
it is  hinted  that this will bring you  to a  sorry end in no  more  than a
month. And so, in order  to deliver you from  this painful anticipation,  we
have decided to  come  to  your aid, taking advantage  of the  fact that you
invited yourself here precisely with the purpose of eavesdropping and spying
out whatever you can.'
     The  baron  turned  paler than Abaddon, who was  exceptionally pale  by
nature, and then something strange took place. Abaddon stood in front of the
baron  and took off his glasses  for a  second. At the same moment something
flashed fire in Azazello's  hand,  something clapped softly, the baron began
to fall backwards, crimson blood spurted from his chest and  poured down his
starched shirt and waistcoat. Koroviev put the cup  to the spurt and  handed
the full  cup to  Woland. The baron's lifeless body was by that time already
on the floor.
     'I drink your health, ladies  and gentlemen,' Woland said  quietly and,
raising the cup, touched it to his lips.
     Then a metamorphosis  occurred.  The  patched shirt  and worn  slippers
disappeared. Woland was in some sort of  black chlamys with a steel sword on
his  hip. He  quickly  approached Margarita, offered her the  cup,  and said
imperiously:
     'Drink!'
     Margarita became dizzy,  she  swayed, but  the cup  was already  at her
lips, and voices, she could not make out whose, whispered in both her ears:
     'Don't be afraid, Queen ...  don't be afraid, Queen, the blood has long
since gone into the earth. And where it was  spilled, grapevines are already
growing.'
     Margarita,  without opening her eyes,  took a gulp, and a sweet current
ran through her veins, a ringing  began in her ears. It seemed  to her  that
cocks were crowing deafeningly, that somewhere a march was being played. The
crowds of guests began to lose their  shape:  tailcoaters and women  fell to
dust. Decay enveloped the room before  Margarita's eyes, a  sepulchral smell
flowed  over  it. The columns  fell apart, the  fires went  out,  everything
shrank, there were no more fountains, no camellias, no tulips. And there was
simply this:  the modest living room of the jeweller's widow, and a strip of
light falling from  a slightly opened door. And  Margarita went through this
slightly opened door.

        CHAPTER 24. The Extraction of the Master


     In Woland's bedroom  everything turned out to be as it had been  before
the ball. Woland was sitting on the bed in his nightshirt, only Hella was no
longer  rubbing  his leg, but was setting out  supper on the table on  which
they had  been playing chess. Koroviev and  Azazello, having  removed  their
tailcoats,  were sitting at  the table, and next to them, of course, was the
cat, who refused  to part  with his  bow-tie, though  it had turned  into an
utterly filthy rag.  Margarita, swaying, came up to the table and  leaned on
it.  Then Woland beckoned her to him like the other time and  indicated that
she should sit down beside him.
     "Well, did they wear you out very much?' asked Woland.
     'Oh, no, Messire,' Margarita answered, but barely audibly.
     'Nobless obleege,' the cat observed and poured some  transparent liquid
into a goblet for Margarita.
     'Is that vodka?' Margarita asked weakly.
     The cat jumped up on his chair in resentment.
     `Good heavens, Queen,' he croaked, 'would I allow myself  to pour vodka
for a lady? It's pure alcohol!'
     Margarita smiled and made an attempt to push the glass away.
     'Drink boldly,'  said Woland,  and Margarita took the glass in her hand
at once.
     'Hella, sit down,' Woland ordered and explained to Margarita: The night
of the full moon is a festive night, and I  have supper in the small company
of my  retinue  and  servants. And so, how do you feel?  How did this tiring
ball go?'
     'Stupendous!'  rattled  Koroviev. `Everybody's  enchanted,  infatuated,
crushed! So much tact, so much skill, charm, and loveliness!'
     Woland silently raised his glass and clinked with Margarita.  Margarita
drank  obediently, thinking that this alcohol would be the end  of  her. But
nothing bad happened. A  living warmth  flowed  into  her stomach, something
struck her softly on the nape, her strength  came back, as if she had got up
after  a long,  refreshing  sleep,  with a wolfish appetite besides.  And on
recalling that she had eaten nothing since  the previous morning, it  flared
up still more ... She greedily began gulping down caviar.
     Behemoth cut  a slice of pineapple, salted it, peppered it, ate it, and
then  tossed  off  a second glass  of  alcohol so  dashingly  that  everyone
applauded.
     After Margarita's second glass, the candles in the candelabra flared up
more  brightly, and the flame increased in the fireplace. Margarita  did not
feel drunk at all. Biting the meat with her white  teeth, Margarita savoured
the juice  that  ran  from it, at  the same time  watching  Behemoth  spread
mustard on an oyster.
     'Why don't you put some grapes on top?' Hella said quietly, nudging the
cat in the ribs.
     'I beg you not  to teach me,' replied Behemoth, `I  have sat  at table,
don't worry, that I have!'
     'Ah, how nice it is to have supper like this, by the fireside, simply,'
Koroviev clattered, 'in a small circle ...'
     'No, Fagott,' objected the cat, 'a ball has its own charm, and scope.'
     'There's no charm in it,  or scope either,  and those idiotic bears and
tigers in the bar almost gave me migraine with their roaring,' said Woland.
     `I  obey,  Messire,'  said  the cat,  'if you  find  no  scope,  I will
immediately begin to hold the same opinion.'
     'Watch yourself!' Woland said to that.
     'I was  joking,'  the  cat said humbly,  'and as far as the tigers  are
concerned, I'll order them roasted.'
     'One can't eat tiger,' said Hella.
     'You  think not? Then  I beg you to  listen,' responded the  cat,  and,
narrowing his  eyes with pleasure, he  told  how he had once wandered in the
wilderness for nineteen days,' and the only thing he had to eat was the meat
of a tiger he had killed. They all listened  to this entertaining  narrative
with interest, and when Behemoth finished, exclaimed in chorus:
     'Bunk!'
     'And the most interesting thing about this bunk,' said Woland, 'is that
it's bunk from first word to last.'
     'Ah,  bunk is it?' exclaimed  the  cat, and  they  all thought he would
start protesting, but he only said quietly: 'History will judge.'
     'And  tell me,' Margot,  revived after the vodka,  addressed  Azazello,
'did you shoot him, this former baron?'
     `Naturally,'  answered  Azazello,  `how  could  I  not  shoot  him?  He
absolutely had to be shot.'
     'I got so excited!' exclaimed Margarita, 'it happened so unexpectedly!'
     "There was nothing  unexpected in it,'  Azazello objected, but Koroviev
started wailing and whining:
     `How not get excited? I myself was  quaking  in my  boots!  Bang!  Hup!
Baron on his back!'
     'I nearly had hysterics,' the cat added, licking the caviar spoon.
     'Here's  what  I don't understand,' Margarita said,  and golden  sparks
from  the crystal glittered in  her eyes. 'Can it be that the music  and the
noise of this ball generally weren't heard outside?'
     'Of course they weren't, Queen,' explained Koroviev. 'It has to be done
so that nothing is heard. It has to be done carefully.'
     'Well, yes, yes  ... But the thing is  that that man on the  stairs ...
when Azazello and I passed by ... and  the  other  one by the entrance ... I
think he was watching your apartment...'
     'Right, right!'  cried Koroviev, 'right, dear Margarita Nikolaevna! You
confirm my suspicions! Yes, he was  watching  the apartment! I myself  first
took him for an absent-minded assistant  professor or a lover languishing on
the  stairs.  But no, no!  Something kept  gnawing at my  heart! Ah,  he was
watching the apartment! And the other one by the entrance, too! And the same
for the one in the gateway!'
     'But,  it's interesting, what  if they come  to arrest  you?' Margarita
asked.
     `They're  sure  to  come,  charming  Queen,  they're sure to!'  replied
Koroviev, 'my heart tells me they'll  come. Not  now, of course,  but in due
time   they'll  certainly  come.  But  I  don't  suppose  it  will  be  very
interesting.'
     'Ah,  I got so excited when that baron fell!' said Margarita, evidently
still reliving the murder, which was the first she had seen in her life.
     'You must be a very good shot?'
     'Passable,' replied Azazello.
     `From  how many paces?' Margarita asked Azazello  a  not entirely clear
question.
     'Depends on what,'  Azazello replied reasonably. 'It's one thing to hit
the critic Latunsky's window  with a hammer, and quite another  thing to hit
him in the heart.'
     `In  the heart!' exclaimed Margarita, for  some reason putting her hand
to her own heart. 'In the heart!' she repeated in a hollow voice.
     `Who is this  critic  Latunsky?' asked  Woland, narrowing  his eyes  at
Margarita.
     Azazello, Koroviev  and Behemoth dropped their  eyes somehow abashedly,
and Margarita answered, blushing:
     `There  is  this  certain  critic.  I  destroyed  his  whole  apartment
tonight.'
     'Just look at you! But what for? ...'
     'You see, Messire,' Margarita explained, 'he ruined a certain master.'
     'But why go to such trouble yourself?' asked Woland.
     'Allow me, Messire!' the cat cried out joyfully, jumping up.
     'You  sit down,' Azazello  grunted, standing  up. 'I'll go myself right
now ...'
     'No!' exclaimed Margarita. 'No, I beg you, Messire, there's no need for
that!'
     `As you wish, as  you wish,' Woland  replied, and Azazello  sat down in
his place.
     'So,  where  were we,  precious Queen Margot?' said Koroviev. 'Ah, yes,
the  heart... He does hit the heart,' Koroviev  pointed  his long  finger in
Azazello's direction,  'as you  choose -  any auricle of  the heart, or  any
ventricle.'
     Margarita did not  understand at first, and when she did, she exclaimed
in surprise:
     'But they're covered up!'
     'My dear,' clattered Koroviev, 'that's the point, that they're  covered
up! That's the whole salt of it! Anyone can hit an uncovered object!'
     Koroviev  took a seven  of  spades from the desk drawer, offered  it to
Margarita, and asked her to mark one of the pips with her fingernail.
     Margarita marked the one in the upper right-hand corner.  Hella hid the
card under a pillow, crying:
     'Ready!'
     Azazello, who  was sitting with  his  back to  the pillow, drew a black
automatic from the pocket  of his tailcoat trousers, put the muzzle over his
shoulder,  and,  without  turning towards  the bed,