shadow.  Woland's  face was tilted  to  one  side,  the
right-hand corner of his mouth pulled downward and deep  furrows  marked his
forehead parallel  to  his eyebrows. The  skin of his  face seemed burned by
timeless sunshine.
     Woland was lying  sprawled on the bed, dressed  only  in a long,  dirty
black nightshirt, patched on the  left shoulder. One bare  leg was tucked up
beneath  him, the other stretched  out on the bench. Hella was massaging his
knees with a steaming ointment.
     On Woland's bare, hairless chest  Margarita noticed a scarab on  a gold
chain, intricately carved out of black stone and  marked on its back with an
arcane script.  Near Woland was  a strange globe, lit from  one side,  which
seemed almost alive.
     The silence lasted for several seconds.  '  He is studying me,' thought
Margarita and by an effort of will tried to stop her legs from trembling.
     At  last Woland  spoke. He  smiled, causing his  one  sparkling eye  to
flash.
     'Greetings, my queen. Please excuse my homely garb.'
     Woland's  voice was so  low-pitched that on certain  syllables it faded
off into' a mere growl.
     Woland  picked up a long sword from  the bed, bent over, poked it under
the bed and said :
     'Come out: now. The game's over. Our guest has arrived.'
     'Please ...' Koroviev whispered anxiously into Margarita's  ear like a
prompter.
     'Please . . "' began Margarita.
     'Messire . . .' breathed Koroviev.
     'Please,  messire,'  Margarita went on quietly but firmly: ' I beg you
not to interrupt your game. I am sure the chess journals would pay a fortune
to be allowed to print it.'
     Azazello  gave a slight croak of approval  and Woland, staring intently
at Margarita, murmured to himself:
     'Yes, Koroviev  was right. The result can  be amazing when you shuffle
the pack. Blood will tell.'
     He stretched out his arm and beckoned Margarita.
     She  walked  up to him,  feeling no  ground under her bare feet. Woland
placed  his hand--as heavy  as stone  and as  hot  as  fire--on  Margarita's
shoulder, pulled her towards him and sat her down on the bed by his side.
     'Since you are  so charming  and kind,'  he said, ' which was  no more
than I expected,  we shan't stand on ceremony.'  He leaned over  the edge of
the bed again and shouted : ' How much longer is this performance  under the
bed going to last? Come on out! '
     'I  can't find the knight,' replied the cat  in a mumed  falsetto from
beneath  the  bed. ' It's galloped off  somewhere and there's  a  frog  here
instead.'
     'Where  do  you think  you  are--on  a fairground?  '  asked  Woland,
pretending to be  angry. ' There's no  frog under the bed!  Save those cheap
tricks for  the Variety! If you  don't come out at once we'll begin to think
you've gone over to the enemy, you deserter! '
     'Never, messire! ' howled the cat, crawling out with the knight in its
paw.
     'Allow me to introduce  to you . . .' Woland  began, then interrupted
himself. ' No, really, he looks too ridiculous! Just look what  he's done to
himself while he was under the bed!'
     The cat, covered in  dust and  standing  on  its  hind legs,  bowed  to
Margarita. Round its neck it  was now  wearing a made-up white bow tie on an
elastic band, with a pair of ladies' mother-of-pearl binoculars hanging on a
cord. It had also gilded its whiskers.
     'What have  you done? ' exclaimed Woland. '  Why have you  gilded your
whiskers? And what on  earth do you want with a white tie  when  you haven't
even got any trousers? '
     'Trousers don't  suit  cats,  messire,'  replied  the cat  with great
dignity. '  Why don't you tell  me to wear boots? Cats always wear  boots in
fairy  tales. But have you ever seen a cat going to a  ball without a tie? I
don't want to make myself look ridiculous. One likes to look as smart as one
can. And that also applies to my opera-glasses, messire i'
     'But your whiskers? . . .'
     'I  don't see  why,' the cat objected coldly, ' Azazello  and Koroviev
are allowed  to cover themselves in powder  and why  powder is  better  than
gilt. I  just powdered my whiskers,  that's  all.  It  would be  a different
matter if I'd shaved myself! A cleanshaven  cat is something monstrous, that
I agree. But I see . . .' --here the cat's voice trembled with pique--'. . .
that this is a conspiracy to be rude about my appearance. Clearly I am faced
with a problem--shall I go to the ball or not? What do you say, messire?'
     Outraged,  the  cat  had so inflated itself  that  it  looked  about to
explode at any second.
     'Ah,  the  rogue,  the  sly rogue,'  said  Woland shaking his  head. '
Whenever he's losing a game he starts a spiel like a quack-doctor at a fair.
Sit down and stop all this hot air.'
     'Very  well,' replied  the cat, sitting down, ' but  I must object. My
remarks are by no means all hot air, as you so vulgarly put it, but a series
of  highly  apposite  syllogisms  which   would  be  appreciated   by   such
connoisseurs  as  Sextus  Empiricus,  Martian  Capella,   even,  who  knows,
Aristotle himself.
     'Check,' said Woland.
     'Check it  is,' rejoined the cat, surveying the chessboard through his
lorgnette.
     'So,' Woland turned to Margarita, ' let me introduce my retinue. That
creature who has been playing the fool  is the  cat Behemoth.  A2a2ello  and
Koroviev you have already met; this
     is  my  maid, Hella. She's  prompt, clever, and there's  no service she
cannot perform for you.'
     The beautiful Hella  turned her  green  eyes on Margarita  and  smiled,
continuing to scoop  out the ointment in the palm of her hand and to rub  it
on Woland's knee.
     'Well, there they are,' concluded  Woland, wincing as  Hella massaged
his knee rather too hard.  '  A charming and select little band.' He stopped
and began turning his globe, so cleverly made that the blue sea shimmered in
waves  and the  polar  cap was  of  real  ice  and  snow. On the chessboard,
meanwhile, confusion reigned.  Distraught, the white king was stamping about
on his square  and waving his arms in desperation. Three  white pawns, armed
with halberds, were staring in bewilderment at  a bishop  who was waving his
crozier and pointing forwards to where Woland's black knights sat mounted on
two hot-blooded horses, one pawing the  ground  of a white square, the other
on a black square.
     Margarita  was fascinated  by  the  game  and amazed to  see  that  the
chessmen were alive.
     Dropping its lorgnette, the cat gently nudged his king in the  back, at
which the wretched king covered his face in despair.
     'You're in trouble, my dear  Behemoth,' said  Koroviev  in a voice of
quiet malice.
     'The position is serious but far  from hopeless,' retorted Behemoth. '
What is  more, I am confident of ultimate victory. All it needs is a careful
analysis of the situation.'
     His method  of  analysis took the  peculiar form of pulling  faces  and
winking at his king.
     'That won't do you any good,' said Koroview. ' Oh! ' cried Behemoth, '
all the parrots have flown away, as I said they would.'
     From far  away  came  the  sound  of innumerable  wings.  Koroviev  and
Azazello rushed out of the room.
     'You're  nothing but a pest  with all your arrangements for the ball,'
grumbled  Woland,  preoccupied with  his  globe.  As soon  as  Koroviev  and
Azazella had gone. Behemoth's  winking increased  until  at last  the  white
king  guessed what  was required  of him. He suddenly pulled  off his cloak,
dropped it  on his square and walked off the board. The bishop picked up the
royal cloak, threw it round his shoulders and took the king's place.
     Koroviev and Azazello returned.
     'False alarm, as usual,' growled Azazello.
     'Well, I thought I heard something,' said the cat.
     'Come on, how much longer do you need? ' asked Woland. ' Check.'
     'I must have mis-heard you, mon maitre,' replied the cat. ' My king is
not in check and cannot be.'
     'I repeat--check.'
     'Messire,' rejoined the cat in a voice of  mock anxiety, ' you must be
suffering from over-strain. I am not in check! '
     'The king is on square Kz,' said Woland, without looking at the board.
     'Messire, you amaze me,' wailed the cat, putting on an amazed  face, '
there is no king on that square.'
     'What? ' asked Woland,  with a puzzled look at the board. The  bishop,
standing in  the  king's  square,  turned his head away and covered his face
with his hand.
     'Aha, you rogue,' said Woland reflectively.
     'Messire! I  appeal to the laws  of logic!' said the cat, clasping its
paws to its  chest, ' if a player  says check  and there  is  no king on the
board, then the king is not in check! '
     'Do you resign or not? ' shouted Woland in a terrible voice.
     'Give  me time to consider, please,' said  the  cat meekly. It put its
elbows on the  table,  covered its ears  with  its paws and began  to think.
Finally, having considered, it said. ' I resign.'
     'He needs murdering, the obstinate beast,' whispered Azazello.
     'Yes, I resign,' said the cat, ' but only because I find it impossible
to play when I'm distracted  by jealous, hostile  spectators!  ' He stood up
and the chessmen ran back into their box.
     'It's time for you to go, Hella,' said Woland and Hella left the room.
'  My leg has  started, hurting again and now there is this  ball .  . .' he
went on.
     'Allow me,' Margarita suggested gently.
     Woland gave her a searching stare and moved his knee towards her.
     The  ointment, hot as  lava,  burned  her hands  but without  flinching
Margarita massaged it into Woland's knee, trying not to cause him pain.
     'My friends maintain that it's rheumatism,' said Woland, continuing to
stare at Margari.ta, ' but I strongly suspect that the pain is a souvenir of
an encounter with a most beautiful witch  that I had in 1571, on the Brocken
in the Harz Mountains.'
     'Surely not! ' said Margarita.
     'Oh, give it  another three hundred years or so and it  will go.  I've
been  prescribed  all  kinds  of  medicaments,  but  I  prefer  to stick  to
traditional old wives' remedies. I inherited some extraordinary herbal cures
from my  terrible old grandmother. Tell  me, by the way--do you  suffer from
any complaint? Perhaps you have some sorrow which is weighing on your heart?
'
     'No messire,  I have no such complaint,' replied Margarita astutely. '
In any case, since I have been with you I have never felt better.'
     'As I said--blood will tell . . .' said Woland cheerfully to no one in
particular, adding: ' I see my globe interests you.'
     'I have never seen anything so ingenious.'
     'Yes, it is nice. I confess I never like listening to the news  on the
radio.  It's always read out by some silly girl who can't  pronounce foreign
names  properly.  Besides,  at  least  one  in  three  of the  announcers is
tongue-tied,  as  if  they  chose  them  specially.  My globe  is much  more
convenient, especially as I need  exact information. Do you  see that little
speck of land, for instance, washed by the sea o"n one side? Look, it's just
bursting into flames. War has broken, out there. If you  look  closer you'll
see it in detail.'
     Margarita  leaned towards the globe  and saw that the little  square of
land was growing bigger, emerging in natural colours and turning into a kind
of  relief  map. Then she saw a river and a village beside  it. A  house the
size  of  a  pea  grew  until it  was as large  as a matchbox. Suddenly  and
noiselessly  its roof  flew upwards  in  a  puff of black  smoke,  the walls
collapsed  leaving  nothing  of the two-storey matchbox except a few smoking
heaps of rubble.  Looking  even  closer Margarita  discerned  a  tiny female
figure lying on the  ground  and beside her in a pool of  blood  a baby with
outstretched arms.
     'It's all over now,' said  Woland, smiling. ' He was too young to have
sinned. Abadonna has done his work impeccably.'
     'I  wouldn't  like to be on the side that is against Abadonna,'  said
Margarita. ' Whose side is he on? '
     'The more I  talk to you,' said  Woland kindly, ' the more convinced I
am  that you  are  very  intelligent.  Let me  reassure you.  He is  utterly
impartial and is equally sympathetic to  the people fighting on either side.
Consequently the outcome  is  always the  same  for  both  sides. Abadonna!'
Woland called softly and from the wall appeared the figure of a  man wearing
dark glasses.  These glasses made such a  powerful  impression on  Margarita
that she gave a low cry, turned  away and hit her head against Woland's leg.
' Stop it!  ' cried Woland. ' How nervous  people are nowadays! ' He slapped
Margarita on the back so hard  that her  whole body seemed  to ring. '  He's
only wearing spectacles, that's all.  There never has been and never will be
a case when Abadonna comes to anyone too soon. In any case, I'm here--you're
my guest. I just wanted to show him to you.'
     Abadonna stood motionless.
     'Could  he  take off  his  glasses  for a moment? '  asked Margarita,
pressing against Woland and shuddering, though now with curiosity.
     'No, that is impossible,' replied Woland in a grave tone. At a wave of
his hand, Abadonna vanished. ' What did you want to say, Azazello?'
     'Messire,'  answered  Azazello,  '  two strangers  have  arrived--  a
beautiful girl who  is whining and begging  to be allowed to  stay  with her
mistress, and with her there is, if you'll forgive me, her pig.'
     'What odd behaviour for a girl! ' said Woland.
     'It's Natasha--my Natasha! ' exclaimed Margarita.
     'Very well, she may stay here with her  mistress. Send the  pig to the
cooks.'
     'Are you  going to  kill it?  ' cried  Margarita in fright. ' Please,
messire,  that's  Nikolai Ivanovich, my neighbour. There  was a mistake--she
rubbed the cream on him . . .'
     'Who said anything about killing  him? ' said Woland. '  I merely want
him to sit at the cooks' table, that's all.  I  can't allow a  pig  into the
ballroom, can I? '
     'No, of  course  not,'  said  Azazello,  then announced  :  ' Midnight
approaches, Messire.'
     'Ah,  good.' Woland turned to Margarita.  '  Now let  me  thank you in
advance for your services tonight. Don't lose your head and don't  be afraid
of anything. Drink nothing except  water, otherwise it will sap  your energy
and you will find yourself flagging. Time to go! '
     As Margarita got up from the carpet Koroviev appeared in the doorway.



        23. Satan's Rout


     Midnight  was  approaching,  time   to  hurry.  Peering  into  the  dim
surroundings, Margarita discerned some candles and an  empty pool carved out
of onyx. As Margarita stood in the pool Hella, assisted by Natasha, poured a
thick,  hot red liquid all  over her.  Margarita tasted salt on her lips and
realised that she was being washed in blood. The  bath of blood was followed
by  another  liquid--dense, translucent and pink,  and Margarita's head swam
with attar of roses. Next she was  laid on a  crystal couch and rubbed  with
large green leaves until she glowed.
     The cat  came in  and began  to help.  It  squatted on its  haunches at
Margarita's feet and began polishing her instep like a shoeblack.
     Margarita never  remembered who it  was who  stitched her shoes out  of
pale rose petals or how those shoes fastened themselves of their own accord.
A  force lifted  her up and placed her in  front  of a mirror:  in  her hair
glittered a diamond crown. Koroviev appeared and hung on  Margarita's breast
a picture  of a black poodle in  a heavy  oval  frame with a massive  chain.
Queen Margarita found this  ornament extremely burdensome, as the chain hurt
her neck and the picture pulled her over forwards. However, the respect with
which  Koroviev and  Behemoth now treated  her was  some recompense  for the
discomfort.
     'There's nothing  for  it,' murmured  Koroviev at the door of the room
with the pool. ' You must wear it round your neck-- you must...  Let me give
you  a last word  of advice, your  majesty. The  guests at the ball  will be
mixed-  -oh, very mixed--but you  must show no favouritism, queen Margot! If
you don't like anybody ... I realise that you won't show it in your face, of
course not--but you  must not even  let  it cross your mind! If you do,  the
guest is  bound to  notice it instantly. You must be sweet and  kind to them
all, your majesty.  For  that, the hostess of the  ball  will be  rewarded a
hundredfold. And  another  thing--  don't neglect  anybody or fail to notice
them.  Just  a smile  if  you haven't time to toss them a word, even just  a
little turn of your head! Anything  you like  except inattention--they can't
bear that. . . .'
     Escorted by Koroviev and Behemoth, Margarita stepped out of the bathing
hall and into total darkness.
     'Me, me,' whispered the cat, ' let me give the signal! '
     'All right, give it,' replied Koroviev from the dark.
     'Let  the ball  commence! '  shrieked  the  cat  in a  piercing voice.
Margarita screamed and  shut her  eyes for  several seconds.  The ball burst
upon her  in an  explosion  of  light,  sound  and  smell. Arm  in arm  with
Koroviev, Margarita  found  herself  in  a tropical forest. Scarlet-breasted
parrots with green tails perched on lianas and hopping from branch to branch
uttered deafening screeches of ' Ecstasy! Ecstasy! ' The forest soon came to
an  end and its hot,  steamy air gave  way to the  cool of  a ballroom  with
columns made of a yellowish, iridescent stone. Like  the forest the ballroom
was completely empty except for some naked Negroes in silver turbans holding
candelabra.  Their  faces  paled with excitement when Margarita floated into
the  ballroom with her suite, to which  Azazello had  now  attached himself.
Here Koroviev released Margarita's arm and whispered :
     'Walk straight towards the tulips! '
     A low wall of white tulips rose up in front of Margarita. Beyond it she
saw countless lights in globes, and rows of men in tails and starched  white
shirts. Margarita  saw then  where  the sound of ball music had  been coming
from. A  roar  of brass  deafened  her and  the soaring  violins that  broke
through it poured over her body  like  blood. The orchestra, all hundred and
fifty of them, were playing a polonaise.
     Seeing  Margarita  the tail-coated conductor turned  pale,  smiled  and
suddenly raised the  whole orchestra to its feet with a  wave  of  his  arm.
Without a moment's  break in  the music  the  orchestra  stood and  engulfed
Margarita in sound. The conductor  turned away  from  the players and gave a
low bow. Smiling, Margarita waved to him.
     'No,  no, that won't do,' whispered Koroviev.  ' He  won't sleep  all
night. Shout to him " Bravo, king of the walt2! " '
     Margarita shouted  as she was told, amazed that her  voice, full  as  a
bell,  rang out over the noise of the  orchestra. The conductor gave a start
of pleasure, placed his left  hand on  his heart and with his  right went on
waving his white baton at the orchestra.
     'Not  enough,'  whispered Koroviev.  ' Look over  there  at  the first
violins and nod to them so  that every one of them  thinks you recognise him
personally.  They  are all  world  famous.  Look,  there  ...  on the  first
desk--that's Joachim! That's right! Very good . . . Now--on we go.'
     'Who is the conductor? ' asked Margarita as she floated away.
     'Johann Strauss!' cried the cat. '  May I be hung from a liana  in the
tropical  forest if any ball has ever had an orchestra like this! I arranged
it! And not one of them was ill or refused to come!'
     There were  no columns in the next hall, but instead  it was flanked by
walls of red,  pink, and milky-white  roses on one side and  on the other by
banks of Japanese double camellias. Fountains  played  between the walls  of
flowers and champagne bubbled in three ornamental basins, the first of which
was a  translucent violet in  colour,  the second  ruby, the third  crystal.
Negroes  in  scarlet turbans  were  busy with silver scoops filling  shallow
goblets with champagne from the  basins. In a gap in the wall of roses was a
man bouncing  up and down on a  stage in a red swallow-tail coat, conducting
an unbearably loud jazz band.  As soon as he saw  Margarita he  bent down in
front of  her until his  hands touched  the floor, then straightened up  and
said in a piercing yell:
     'Alleluia!'
     He slapped himself once  on one knee, then twice on the other, snatched
a cymbal from the hands of a nearby musician and struck it against a pillar.
     As  she  floated  away  Margarita  caught  a  glimpse of  the  virtuoso
bandleader, struggling against  the  polonaise  that she  could  still  hear
behind  her, hitting  the bandsmen  on  the head with his cymbal  while they
crouched in comic terror.
     At  last  they  regained  the platform  where  Koroviev  had first  met
Margarita with the lamp. Now her eyes were  blinded with the light streaming
from innumerable bunches of crystal  grapes. Margarita stopped and a  little
amethyst pillar appeared under her left hand.
     'You can rest  your  hand on  it if you  find  it becomes too tiring,'
whispered Koroviev.
     A black-skinned boy  put a cushion embroidered  with  a  golden  poodle
under Margarita's feet. Obeying the pressure of an  invisible hand  she bent
her knee and placed her right foot on the cushion.
     Margarita glanced around. Koroviev and Azazello were standing in formal
attitudes.  Besides Azazello  were  three  young  men, who  vaguely reminded
Margarita of Abadonna. A cold wind blew in her back. Looking round Margarita
saw  that wine was foaming  out of the marble wall into a basin made of ice.
She felt something warm and velvety by her left leg. It was Behemoth.
     Margarita was  standing at  the  head  of  a  vast  carpeted  staircase
stretching  downwards in front  of  her. At the bottom, so far away that she
seemed to be looking at  it through the wrong end of a  telescope, she could
see a vast hall with an absolutely immense fireplace, into whose cold, black
maw  one could  easily  have  driven  a  five-ton  lorry. The hall  and  the
staircase, bathed  in  painfully  bright  light, were  empty. Then Margarita
heard the sound of distant trumpets. For some minutes they stood motionless.
     'Where are the guests? ' Margarita asked Koroviev.
     'They will be here at any moment, your majesty. There  will be no lack
of them. I confess  I'd  rather be sawing logs  than receiving  them here on
this platform.'
     'Sawing  logs?  '   said  the  garrulous  cat.  '  I'd  rather  be  a
tram-conductor and there's no job worse than that.'
     'Everything  must be  prepared  in  advance, your majesty,'  explained
Koroviev, his eye glittering behind the broken lens of  his monocle. ' There
can  be  nothing more embarrassing than for the first guest to  wait  around
uncomfortably, not knowing what to  do, while his lawful  consort curses him
in a whisper for arriving too early. We cannot allow that at our ball, queen
Margot.'
     'I should think not', said the cat.
     'Ten seconds  to  midnight,'  said  Koroviev,  ' it will  begin  in  a
moment.'
     Those  ten  seconds  seemed  unusually  long  to  Margarita.  They  had
obviously passed but absolutely nothing  seemed to  be happening. Then there
was  a crash from below  in  the enormous  fireplace and out of  it sprang a
gallows  with a  half-decayed corpse bouncing on its arm. The  corpse jerked
itself loose  from the  rope, fell  to the  ground and  stood  up as a dark,
handsome man in tailcoat and lacquered  pumps. A small, rotting coffin  then
slithered out  of the fireplace, its lid flew  off and another corpse jumped
out. The handsome man stepped gallantly towards it and offered his bent arm.
The  second corpse turned  into a nimble little woman in black slippers  and
black feathers  on  her head and then man and  woman together hurried up the
staircase.
     'The first guests!'  exclaimed  Koroviev.  ' Monsieur Jacques and his
wife. Allow  me to introduce to you, your majesty, a most interesting man. A
confirmed forger,  a  traitor to his country but no  mean alchemist. He  was
famous,' Koroviev whispered  into Margarita's ear, ' for having poisoned the
king's  mistress.  Not  everybody  can  boast  of  that,  can they?  See how
good-looking he is! '
     Turning pale and open-mouthed with shock, Margarita looked down and saw
gallows and coffin disappear through a side door in the hall.
     'We are delighted! ' the  cat roared to Monsieur Jacques as he mounted
the steps.
     Just then a headless, armless skeleton appeared in the fireplace below,
fell down and turned into yet  another man in a  tailcoat. Monsieur Jacques'
wife had by now reached the head of the staircase where she knelt down, pale
with excitement, and kissed Margarita's foot.
     'Your majesty . . .' murmured Madame Jacques.
     'Her majesty is charmed! ' shouted Koroviev. 'Your majesty . . .' said
Monsieur Jacques in a low voice.
     'We  are  charmed! ' intoned the  cat. The young men beside  Azazello,
smiling  lifeless but welcoming  smiles,  were showing Monsieur  and  Madame
Jacques  to one side, wlhere they were offered goblets  of  champagne by the
Negro attendants. The single man in tails came up the staircase at a run.
     'Count  Robert,'  Koroviev  whispered  to  Margarita.  '  An  equally
interesting character. Rather amusing, your majesty-- the case is  reversed:
he was the queen's lover and poisoned his own wife.'
     'We are delighted. Count,' cried Behemoth.
     One  after  another  three  coffins  bounced  out  o.f  the  fireplace,
splitting and breaking open as they  fell, then someone in a black cloak who
was  immediately  stabbed in the back by  the next person to come  down  the
chimney.  There  was a  muffled shriek.  When  an almost  totally decomposed
corpse emerged  from  the  fireplace,  Margarita frowned and a  hand,  which
seemed to be Natasha's, offered her a flacon of sal volatile.
     The staircase began to fill up. Now on almost every step there were men
in tailcoats accompanied by naked women who only  differed in  the colour of
their shoes and the feathers on their heads.
     Margarita noticed  a woman  with the  downcast gaze of  a  nun hobbling
towards her, thin,  shy, hampered by a stsrange wooden boot on  her left leg
and a broad green kerchief round her neck.
     'Who's that woman in green? ' Margarita enquired.
     'A  most charming and respectable lady,' whispered Koroviev. ' Let  me
introduce  you--Signora  Toffana. She was extremely popular among  the young
and attractive ladies of Naples and Palermo, especially among those who were
tired  of  their husbands. Women  do get  bored  with  their  husbands, your
majesty  .  . .'  '  Yes,'  replied Margarita dully, smiling to  two  men in
evening dress who were bowing to kiss her knee and her foot.
     'Well,' Koroviev managed  to whisper to Margarita as he simultaneously
cried  : ' Duke! A glass  of champagne?  We are charmed! . . . Well, Signora
Toffana sympathised  with those  poor women and sold them some liquid  in  a
bladder. The woman poured the  liquid into her  husband's soup, who  ate it,
thanked her for it and felt  splendid.  However, after a few hours he  would
begin to feel a terrible  thirst,  then lay down on his bed and  a day later
another beautiful Neapolitan lady was as free as air.'
     'What's that  on her leg? ' asked  Margarita, without ceasing to offer
her hand to the guests who  had  overtaken Signora  Toffana on the way up. '
And why is she wearing green round her neck? Has she a withered neck? '
     'Charmed, Prince!' shouted Koroviev  as he whispered to  Margarita : '
She has  a  beautiful  neck,  but something unpleasant  happened to  her  in
prison. The thing on  her leg, your majesty, is a Spanish boot and she wears
a  scarf  because  when  her  jailers  found  out  that  about five  hundred
ill-matched husbands had been dispatched from Naples  and Palermo  for ever,
they strangled Signora Toffana in a rage.'
     'How  happy I  am, your  majesty, that I have the  great honour . . .'
whispered  Signora Toffana in a  nun-like voice, trying  to fall on one knee
but  hindered  by the  Spanish  boot. Koroviev and  Behemoth  helped Signora
Toffana to rise.
     'I am delighted,' Margarita answered her as  she gave her  hand to the
next arrival.
     People were  now mounting the staircase in a flood. Margarita ceased to
notice the arrivals in  the  hall.  Mechanically she  raised and lowered her
hand, bared her teeth  in a smile for each new guest. The landing behind her
was buzzing with voices, and  music  like  the waves of the  sea floated out
from the ball-rooms.
     'Now this woman is a  terrible bore.'  Koroviev no longer  bothered to
whisper but shouted it aloud, certain that no one  could hear his voice over
the hubbub. ' She  loves coming to a ball  because  it gives her a chance to
complain about her handkerchief.'
     Among the approaching crowd Margarita's glance  picked out the woman at
whom Koroviev  was pointing. She was  young, about twenty, with a remarkably
beautiful figure but a look of nagging reproach.
     'What handkerchief? ' asked Margarita.
     'A  maid  has  been  assigned to her,' Koroviev  explained, ' who for
thirty years has  been putting a handkerchief  on her bedside table.  It  is
there every morning when she  wakes up. She burns it in the  stove or throws
it in the river but every morning it appears again beside her.'
     'What handkerchief?' whispered  Margarita, continuing  to  lower  and
raise her hand to the guests.
     'A handkerchief with a blue border. One day when she was a waitress in
a  cafe the owner enticed her into the  storeroom and nine  months later she
gave birth to a boy, carried him into the woods, stuffed a handkerchief into
his mouth and then  buried him. At the trial she said she couldn't afford to
feed the child.'
     'And where is the cafe-owner? ' asked Margarita.
     'But  your  majesty,'  the  cat  suddenly  growled,  '  what has  the
cafe-owner  got to  do with it? It wasn't  he who  stifled the baby  in  the
forest, was it? '
     Without ceasing to  smile  and to shake hands  with her right hand, she
dug the  sharp nails of  her  left hand into Behemoth's ear and whispered to
the cat:
     'If you butt into the conversation once more, you little horror . . .'
     Behemoth gave a distinctly unfestive squeak and croaked:
     'Your majesty .  . . you'll make my ear swell . . . why spoil the ball
with a swollen ear? I  was speaking from the legal point of view ... I'll be
quiet, I promise, pretend I'm not a cat, pretend I'm  a fish if you like but
please let go of my ear!'
     Margarita released his ear.
     The woman's grim, importunate eyes looked into Margarita's :
     'I am so happy, your majesty,  to be invited to the great  ball of the
full moon.'
     'And  I am delighted  to see  you,' Margarita  answered her,  ' quite
delighted. Do you like champagne? '
     'Hurry up, your majesty! ' hissed Koroviev quietly but  desperately. '
You're causing a traffic-jam on the staircase.'
     'Yes,  I like champagne,' said the  woman imploringly,  and  began to
repeat  mechanically: ' Frieda,  Frieda, Frieda!  My name  is  Frieda,  your
majesty! '
     'Today you  may get drunk, Frieda, and forget about everything,'  said
Margarita.
     Frieda  stretched  out  both her  arms  to Margarita, but Koroviev  and
Behemoth deftly took an arm each and whisked her off into the crowd.
     By  now  people  were  advancing  from below  like a  phalanx  bent  on
assaulting the  landing  where Margarita stood. The naked women mounting the
staircase  between  the  tail-coated  and white-tied  men floated  up  in  a
spectrum of coloured bodies that ranged from white through olive, copper and
coffee  to quite black.  In hair  that was  red, black, chestnut or  flaxen,
sparks flashed from precious stones. Diamond-studded orders glittered on the
jackets and shirt-fronts of the men. Incessantly Margarita felt the touch of
lips  to her knee, incessantly she offered her hand to  be  kissed, her face
stretched into a rigid mask of welcome.
     'Charmed,' Koroviev would monotonously intone, ' We are  charmed . . .
her majesty is charmed . . .'
     'Her majesty is charmed,'  came a nasal  echo  from Azazello, standing
behind her.
     'I am charmed! ' squeaked the cat.
     'Madame  la marquise,'  murmured Koroviev, ' poisoned her father, her
two  brothers and  two sisters  for the  sake  of an inheritance  . .  . Her
majesty is  delighted, Mme. Minkin! .  . . Ah, how pretty  she  is! A trifle
nervous,  though.  Why  did  she  have to  burn her  maid  with  a  pair  of
curling-tongs? Of course, in the way she used them it was  bound to be fatal
. . . Her majesty is charmed! . . . Look, your majesty--the Emperor Rudolf--
magician and alchemist . .  . Another  alchemist--he  was hanged  . .  . Ah,
there she is! What a magnificent brothel she used to keep in Strasbourg! . .
. We arc  delighted, madame! .  .  . That woman  over  there  was  a  Moscow
dressmaker who  had the brilliantly funny idea  of boring two peep-holes  in
the wall of her fitting-room . . .'
     'And  didn't her lady clients know? enquired  Margarita. ' Of course,
they all knew, your  majesty,' replied Koroviev. ' Charmed! . . . That young
man over there was a dreamer and an eccentric from childhood. A girl fell in
love with him and he sold her to a brothel-keeper . . .
     On  and  on  poured  the  stream   from  below.  Its  source--the  huge
fireplace--showed no  sign  of  drying up.  An  hour passed,  then  another.
Margarita felt her chain weighing more and more. Something odd was happening
to  her hand  : she found she could not lift it  without wincing. Koroviev's
remarks ceased  to interest  her.  She  could no  longer distinguish between
slant-eyed Mongol faces, white faces and black faces. They all merged into a
blur and the air between them  seemed  to be  quivering. A sudden sharp pain
like a needle stabbed at Margarita's right hand, and clenching her teeth she
leaned her elbow on the little pedestal. A sound like the  rustling of wings
came from the rooms behind her as the horde of  guests danced, and Margarita
could feel  the  massive floors  of  marble, crystal  and  mosaic  pulsating
rhythmically.
     Margarita showed  as little interest in the emperor  Caius Caligula and
Messalina as she did in the rest of the procession of kings, dukes, knights,
suicides,  poisoners,  gallows-birds,  procuresses, jailers,  card-sharpers,
hangmen, informers, traitors, madmen, detectives and seducers. Her head swam
with  their names, their faces merged  into a  great blur and only  one face
remained  fixed  in her  memory--Malyuta  Skuratov  with  his  fiery  beard.
Margarita's legs were buckling and she was afraid that she n^ight burst into
tears at any moment.  The worst pain came from her right knee, which all the
guests had kissed. It was  swollen, the  skin on it had turned blue in spite
of  Natasha's constant  attention to it  with a  sponge  soaked  in fragrant
ointment. By the end of the  third  hour Margarita glanced wearily  down and
saw with a start of joy that the flood of guests was thinning out.
     'Every ball is the same, your majesty.' whispered Koroviev, ' at about
this time the arrivals  begin to decrease. I promise you that  this  torture
will not last more  than a few minutes longer. Here comes a party of witches
from the Brocken, they're always  the last  to arrive. Yes, there  they are.
And a couple of drunken vampires ... is that all? Oh, no, there's one more .
. . no, two more.'
     The last two guests mounted the staircase.
     'Now this is someone new,' said Koroviev, peering through his monocle.
' Oh, yes, now I remember. Azazello called on him once and advised him, over
a glass of brandy, how to get rid of a man who  was threatening  to denounce
him.  So he  made his friend, who was under an  obligation to him, spray the
other man's office walls with poison.'
     'What's his name? ' asked Margarita.
     'I'm afraid I don't know,' said Koroviev, ' You'd better ask Azazello.
     'And who's that with him? '
     'That's  his friend who did the job. Delighted to welcome you! ' cried
Koroviev to the last two guests.
     The staircase was  empty, and although the reception committee waited a
little longer to make sure, no one else appeared from the fireplace.
     A second  later, half-fainting, Margarita found herself beside the pool
again  where,  bursting  into tears  from the  pain in her arm  and leg, she
collapsed  to  the floo:r. Hella  and Natasha comforted her,  doused her  in
blood and massaged her body until she revived again.
     'Once  more,  queen Margot,'  whispered Koroviev. ' You must make  the
round of the ballrooms  just once more to  show our guests that they are not
being neglected.'
     Again Margarita  floated away from the pool. In place of Johan Strauss'
orchestra the stage behind the wall of  tulips had been taken over by a jazz
band of frenetic apes. An enormous gorilla with shaggy sideburns and holding
a  trumpet was leaping  clumsily up  and down  as  he conducted.  Orang-utan
trumpeters sat in the front row, each with a chimpanzee  accordionist on his
shoulders. Two baboons with manes  like lions' were playing the piano, their
efforts  completely  drowned  by the roaring,  squeaking and banging  of the
saxophones,  violins  and  drums  played by troops  of gibbons, mandrils and
marmosets.  Innumerable  couples circled round the glass floor with  amazing
dexterity, a  mass  of bodies  moving lightly and  gracefully  as one.  Live
butterflies fluttered  over the dancing horde, flowers drifted down from the
ceiling. The electric light had been turned out, the capitals of the pillars
were now lit by myriads of glow-worms, and will-o'-the-wisps danced  through
the air.
     Then Margarita found herself by the side of another pool,  this time of
vast  dimensions and  ringed by  a colonnade. A  gigantic black  Neptune was
pouring a  broad pink  stream from his  great mouth.  Intoxicating  fumes of
champagne rose from  the pool.  Joy  reigned  untrammelled. Women, laughing,
handed their bags to their escorts or to the Negroes who ran along the sides
holding towels,  and dived shrieking  into the  pool. Spray rose in showers.
The crystal bottom of the pool glowed with a faint light which shone through
the  sparkling  wine  to light  up  the  silvery bodies of the swimmers, who
climbed out  of the pool again completely drunk.  Laughter  rang out beneath
the pillars until it drowned even the jazz ba.nd.
     In all  this  debauch  Margarita  distinctly saw  one  totally  drunken
woman's  face  with  eyes   that  were  wild  with  intoxication  yet  still
imploring--Frieda.
     Margarita's head  began to  spin with the fumes of the wine and she was
just about to move on when  the cat staged one of his tricks in the swimming
pool.  Behemoth  made  a  few magic passes  in front  of Neptune's  moiath ;
immediately all  the champagne drained out  of the pool, an-d Neptune  began
spewing  forth  a stream of  brown liquid. Shrieking with delight the  women
screamed : '  Brandy! '  In a few seconds the pool  was full. Spinning round
three  times like  a top  the  cat  leaped into  the air and dived into  the
turbulent  sea  of brandy.  It crawled out, spluttering, its tie soaked, the
gilding  gone  from its whiskers,  and minus  its lorgnette.  Only one woman
dared follow Behemoth's example --the  dressmaker--procuress and her escort,
a  handsome young  mulatto. They both dived into the brandy, but before  she
had time to see any more Margarita was led away by Koroviev.
     They seemed to take wing and in their flight Margarita first  saw great
stone tanks  full  of oysters,  then a row of hellish furnaces blazing  away
beneath the glass floor and attended  by a frantic crew of diabolical chefs.
In the  confusion she  remembered a glimpse of dark  caverns lit by  candles
where  girls were serving meat that  sizzled on glowing coals  and revellers
drank Margarita's  health  from  vast mugs  of beer. Then  came polar  bears
playing accordions and  dancing  a  Russian  dance  on a stage, a salamander
doing conjuring tricks unharmed by the flames around it ... And for a second
time Margarita felt her strength beginning to flag.
     'The last round,'  whispered  Koroviev  anxiously, '  and then  we're
free.'
     Escorted by  Koroviev, Margarita returned to  the ballroom, but now the
dance had stopped and the guests  were crowded  between the pillars, leaving
an  open space in the  middle of the  room. Margarita could not remember who
helped her up