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रविवार, 19 जुलाई 2015

Reading Master and Margarita - 03


Chapter 3

The Seventh Proof-
- A. Charumati Ramdas

We have seen in Chapter 2 that the foreigner narrates the episode of Yeshua-Ha-Nostri being sentenced to death by Pontius Pilate. And by the time the convicts are taken to the Bald Mountain it was already ten o’clock.
Chapter 2 has taken place in Yerushalem.
Chapter 3 begins with the same sentence which has closed Chapter 2. By saying again that it was about 10 o’clock in the morning Bulgakov brings the readers back to the time and space where Berlioz and Bezdomnyi were discussing about Christ.
By this time it is already evening and there is Moon in the sky. Berlioz does not want to irritate this ‘insane’ German, but still says
'Your story is extremely interesting, Professor, though it does not coincide at all with the Gospel stories.'
'Good heavens,' the professor responded, smiling condescendingly, 'you of all people should know that precisely nothing of what is written in the Gospels ever actually took place, and if we start referring to the Gospels as a historical source...' he smiled once more, and Berlioz stopped short, because this was literally the same thing he had been saying to Bezdomnyi as they walked down Bronnaya towards the Patriarch's Ponds.
'That's so,' Berlioz replied, 'but I'm afraid no one can confirm that what you've just told us actually took place either.'
'Oh, yes! That there is one who can!' the professor, beginning to speak in broken language, said with great assurance, and with unexpected mysteriousness he motioned the two friends to move closer.

Please note this peculiarity of Bulgakov’s style: He goes on describing an event with great details and abruptly says that either he does not know about it or it didn’t happen. We shall observe it in the following chapters as well.

Berlioz asks the Professor where he is staying in Moscow, and the professor answers that he plans to stay in Berlioz’s flat. And really does the professor occupy Berlioz’s flat for full three days!
Berlioz asks Bezdomnyi to guard the Foreigner and gets up to make a phone call:

 'You sit here for a little minute with comrade Homeless, and I'll just run to the corner to make a phone call, and then we'll take you wherever you like. You don't know the city...'
Berlioz's plan must be acknowledged as correct: he had to run to the nearest public telephone and inform the foreigners' bureau, thus and so, there's some consultant from abroad sitting at the Patriarch's Ponds in an obviously abnormal state. So it was necessary to take measures, lest some unpleasant nonsense result.

‘To make a call? Well, then make your call,' the sick man agreed sadly, and suddenly begged passionately: `But I implore you, before you go, at least believe that the devil exists! I no longer ask you for anything more.

And while Berlioz is proceeding towards the exit gate:
…the professor called out, cupping his hands like a megaphone:
`Would you like me to have a telegram sent at once to your uncle in Kiev?'
The strange transparent man whom Berlioz had earlier seen in the park reappears again:
Here, just at the exit to Bronnaya, there rose from a bench to meet the editor exactly the same citizen who in the sunlight earlier had formed himself out of the thick swelter. Only now he was no longer made of air, but ordinary, fleshly, and Berlioz clearly distinguished in the beginning twilight that he had a little moustache like chicken feathers, tiny eyes, ironic and half drunk, and checkered trousers pulled up so high that his dirty white socks showed.

Mikhail Alexandrovich drew back, but reassured himself by reflecting that it was a stupid coincidence and that generally there was no time to think about it now.
'Looking for the turnstile, citizen?' the checkered type inquired in a cracked tenor. This way, please! Straight on and you'll get where you're going. How about a little pint pot for my information... to set up an ex-choirmaster!...' Mugging, the specimen swept his jockey's cap from his head.

Thus we get hint to two events:
The place where the foreigner is going to stay;
Berlioz has an uncle in Kiev.
Berlioz slips over the oil spilled by Annushka and falls on the rails, and is immediately crushed by a tramcar which was being driven by a woman.
Thus Professor’s prediction comes true: the meeting of MASSOLIT that Berlioz was going to preside over can’t take place, Berlioz’s head is severed, and a woman had done it (the tram car driver was a woman!). And next moment people who had assembled there saw Berlioz’s head rolling along the fencing of the Patriarchy Ponds.

WE can say that this chapter serves as prelude to the forthcoming events, it establishes professor as fortune teller, it also emphasizes that man has no control over his future; he doesn’t even know what is going to happen to him the next moment.

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