Reading Master and Margarita - 20

Chapter 20

Azazello's Cream

It is Friday, and Margarita was looking impatiently at the clock. As soon as it was 9.30 pm, she opened the little box and looked at the yellowish cream. Then she took out some cream from the box and started rubbing it into her forehead and cheeks.

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.

She writes a small note to her husband asking him to forget and forgive her.

We come across two more characters in this chapter. Margarita’s servant, Natasha and Nikolai Ivanovich, who stayed in the ground floor apartment of her building.

We can see that Margarita treats Natasha as a human being: she is friendly and kind to her:

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.

But Nikolai Ivanovich seems boring to her. She mocks at him. Nikolai Ivanovich too seems to be an influential officer, because every morning the official car takes him to the office and drops back home in the evening.

Azazello calls her at 10 pm and instructs how to fly. She is ready to fly!

Suddenly a sweeping broom with its brush up enters the room. Margarita climbs on the broom and flies out of her apartment…..ready to enjoy her new found freedom…looking forward to meet her love.

We shall be with Margarita…

Reading Master and Margarita - 19

Chapter 19

Margarita

This chapter marks the beginning of second part of the novel. While the first part mainly depicts arrival of Woland and his team in Moscow, and the way they punish people connected with the theatrical world and Housing Society; an ugly picture of literary world is also shown; the second part deals with the fate of Master and Margarita.

I shall deal only with the important points of this chapter.

Bulgakov begins with the emphasis that ‘the true love’ really exists in the world and that he is going to show it to the readers:

Who told you that there is no true, faithful, eternal love in this world! May the liar's vile tongue be cut out!

Follow me, my reader, and me alone, and I will show you such a love!

No! The master was mistaken when with bitterness he told Ivanushka in the hospital, at that hour when the night was falling past midnight, that she had forgotten him. That could not be. She had, of course, not forgotten him.

First of all let us reveal the secret which the master did not wish to reveal to Ivanushka. His beloved's name was Margarita Nikolaevna.

Bulgakov, unlike in most of the literary works, does not introduce the main protagonist in the first few pages of the novel; he introduces Master only in Chapter 13, that too from the point when Master’s life is almost over (as he thought)! Through Master’s story we come to know about his beloved. Master, who was madly in love with her, does not disclose her name; that we come to know in chapter 19.

 Her name, as we see, was Margarita Nikolaevna. She was very beautiful and intelligent; her husband was a very influential, prominent specialist, he adored her; he had made a very important discovery of State importance. Margarita had never known the hazards of living in community flats, she had never even touched a primus stove. She was very rich. She was thirty years old.  Bulgakov asks, was she happy? And answers, “Not for one minute! Never, since the age of nineteen, when she had married and wound up in this house, had she known any happiness.”

Let us stop for a while and ponder over this much information.

How old was Margarita? Thirty years. The novel, its plot, was conceived in 1928. In chapter 13 we had seen that the age of Master was that of Bulgakov himself at that point of time. Margarita’s age is thirty years, but pay attention to the information that she had come to stay in this palatial house when she was 19, that takes us to the year 1917; may be, we can say that Margarita is the product of Revolution; staying with an influential proletarian engineer and loving an intellectual. Later, it is shown that Margarita had royal blood in her veins. That makes it an interesting combination: the mutual relationship between the Royalty, Proletariat and Intelligentsia. That gives an answer why she was unhappy and where was she looking for her happiness.

Coming back to action in this chapter. It is Friday, when all those unbelievable things were happening in Moscow.

Margarita, who had been suffering a lot since Master disappeared, got up late in her palatial house.

She had cursed herself a lot for leaving Master alone on that fateful night. Bulgakov tells the readers that even if she had stayed back, nothing would have changed…because, the midnight-knock at the door spells misfortune and nobody could have stopped the inevitable.

Margarita had Master’s passbook, the unburnt part of his novel about Pontius Pilate, and a dried rose with her. She had kept all these things very carefully.

On Friday too, she spent some time with this treasure. Her maid, Natasha, told her about yesterday’s horrible magic show and then Margarita left for a walk.

On her way to the Alexander’s Park, in trolleybus, she overheard some people talking about a funeral; they were shocked to learn that the head of the deceased disappeared from the coffin. Margarita does not pay much attention to this.

She was in an excited state of mind today. She had a strange dream last night. What was it? Well, you must have read about it, but no harm in quoting it here:

The dream that Margarita had dreamed that night was indeed unusual. The thing was that during her winter sufferings she had never seen the master in her dreams. He released her for the night, and she suffered only in the daylight hours. But now she had dreamed of him.

The dream was of a place unknown to Margarita - hopeless, dismal, under the sullen sky of early spring. In the dream there was this ragged, fleeting, grey sky, and under it a noiseless flock of rooks. Some gnarled little bridge, and under it a muddy spring runlet. Joyless, destitute, half-naked trees. A lone aspen, and further on, among the trees, beyond some vegetable patch, a little log structure - a separate kitchen, a bathhouse, devil knows what it was! Everything around somehow lifeless and so dismal that one just longed to hang oneself from that aspen by the bridge.

Not a puff of breeze, not a movement of the clouds, and not a living soul. What a hellish place for a living man!

And then, imagine, the door of this log structure is thrown open, and he appears. Rather far away, but clearly visible. He is in tatters, it is impossible to make out what he is wearing.

Unshaven, hair dishevelled. Sick, anxious eyes. He beckons with his hand, calling her. Gasping in the lifeless air, Margarita ran to him over the tussocks, and at that moment she woke up.

This dream means only one of two things,' Margarita Nikolaevna reasoned with herself. 'If he's dead and beckoned to me, it means he has come for me, and I will die soon. And that's very good - because then my suffering will soon end. Or else he's alive, and then the dream can only mean one thing, that he's reminding me of himself! He wants to say that we will see each other again...

Yes, we will see each other very soon!'  

Kitchen in dreams indicates hell. So, Margarita got some inkling about Master’s condition, but she is not very sure whether he is alive or not.

In the park she encounters Azazello, who has come to invite her to a foreigner’s place.

Margarita, like any other Soviet citizen is apprehensive about the foreigner, but Azazello assures her that she will benefit from this opportunity. She agrees, saying that she is taking the risk for the sake of her love.

Azazello gives her a small box of some cream and asks to apply all over the body at nine thirty in the evening and wait for his instructions.

Many unbelievable things are going to happen now to Margarita. ….

We have to accompany her when Azazello is going to call her on Friday night!

Reading Master and Margarita - 18

Chapter 18

Hapless Visitors

The title of this chapter is ‘Hapless Visitors’. This chapter introduces a few new characters and exposes quite a few unwanted practices in the Soviet Union.

You, probably, remember that in chapter 3, when Berlioz decides to go out of the Patriarchy Park and inform the authorities about the mysterious professor, the thin checkered man accosted him and asked whether he should send telegram to his uncle in Kiev. The tall, thin man, as you know was Koroviev and this uncle is going to be one of the main characters of this chapter.

Berlioz’s uncle, Maximilian Andreevich Poplavsky was an industrial economist. He was staying on the Institute road in Kiev, was a well-known intellectual of Kiev. For the past few years he was thinking of changing his base to Moscow. He tried to exchange his flat in Kiev with any flat in Moscow, gave advertisements to this effect in the newspapers, but didn’t succeed in getting a flat in Moscow. And now, suddenly, he gets a telegram from his wife’s nephew, ‘Just run over by tramcar funeral on Friday at 3.00 pm come – Berlioz’.

Poplavsky thought over the telegram for a long time: the sender was Berlioz, he says that he is crushed by the tramcar, then how is he sending the telegram; and if he is no more, how does he know that the funeral is going to take place on Friday at 3.00pm.

The Uncle, we must confess, was not very sad at the sudden demise of his wife’s nephew. An idea flashed into his mind: this was a chance to occupy the three rooms of nephew in Moscow; such chance will never come again; he has to go to Moscow and prove that he is the sole legal heir and is obliged to take possession of the three rooms occupied by Berlioz in flat No. 50 of 302B; and hence he decided to go for the funeral.

Poplavsky reaches Moscow on Friday. He goes to the Sadovaya, Building No. 302 and enters the Housing Committee’s office.

We know that President of the Committee, Nikanor Ivanovich is in Stravinsky’s clinic, the Secretary too is missing and the sole member of the Housing Committee, who is very worried and frightened, is suddenly called out by a visitor and he too disappears.    

Poplavsky goes directly to the flat and he is received by Koroviev, who was crying so inconsolably while narrating description of the accident that Poplavsky started suspecting whether this man has designs on Berlioz’s flat. To Poplavsky’s question, ‘who sent him the telegram?’ the cat Begemoth said that it was he who sent the telegram. And asks Poplavsky, ‘So what?’ He demands Passport, and Poplavsky, with his hands trembling, hands over the passport to him.

Begemoth comments, “Who has issued this Passport? Office No 412? There they issue passport to anybody… I would have looked at your face and never given you any passport!”

Poplavsky is categorically informed that his presence at the funeral is cancelled; he should go back to Kiev and live without dreaming about any flat in Moscow. His briefcase is thrown down the stair case; he is pushed out of the flat and pushed from the stair case.

Poplavsky was really intelligent; he could assess the might of these ‘elements’ and having done that thanks God that his life was spared.

He was pushed so hard from the staircase that he flung out of the window on landing and found himself sitting on a bench in front the store room of this building.

Suddenly, a sickly, melancholy man asks him where is flat No 50. Poplavsky gets curious, he wanted to know how this man will be treated by those goons and so, he decides to wait till he comes back.  

However, the man from Kiev had to wait longer than he supposed. The stairway was for some reason deserted all the while. One could hear well, and finally a door banged on the fifth floor.

Poplavsky froze. Yes, those were his little steps. 'He's coming down ...' A door one flight lower opened. The little steps ceased. A woman's voice. The voice of the sad man - yes, it's his voice...

Saying something like 'leave me alone, for Christ's sake ...' Poplavsky's ear stuck through the broken glass. This ear caught a woman's laughter. Quick and brisk steps coming down. And now a woman's back flashed by. This woman, carrying a green oilcloth bag, went out through the front hall to the courtyard. And the little man's steps came anew.

'Strange! He's going back up to the apartment! Does it mean he's part of the gang himself? Yes, he's going back. They've opened the door again upstairs. Well, then, let's wait a little longer ...'

This time he did not have to wait long. The sound of the door. The little steps. The little steps cease. A desperate cry. A cat's miaowing. The little steps, quick, rapid, down, down, down!

Poplavsky had not waited in vain. Crossing himself and muttering something, the melancholy little man rushed past him, hatless, with a completely crazed face, his bald head all scratched and his trousers completely wet. He began tearing at the handle of the front door, unable in his fear to determine whether it opened out or in, managed at last, and flew out into the sun in the courtyard.

The testing of the apartment had been performed. Thinking no more either of the deceased nephew or of the apartment, shuddering at the thought of the risk he had been running, Maximilian Andreevich, whispering only the three words 'It's all clear, it's all clear!', ran out to the courtyard.

A few minutes later the bus was carrying the industrial economist in the direction of the Kiev station.

Who was this thin melancholy man? He was Andrei Fokich, manager of the restaurant at the Variety. He came to see Woland and reported that in yesterday’s magic show the currency notes picked up by public had turned into wrappers of some bottles. The restaurant had sold various items to the audience, who had given him these notes. As a result of their disappearing, he had suffered a huge loss, and he had come to complain about the same. But when Fokich showed these wrappers to Woland, they had again turned into currency notes.

But Woland scolds Fokich, saying that the things in his restaurant are horrible: the tea is just hot water, the cheese was very stale….he emphasised that the eatables should be extremely fresh.

Fokich was given some freshly roasted meat with lemon squeezed over it in a gold plate, while he was offered a seat, the chair broke down, the wine from the glass spilled on Fokich’s trousers and made them wet.

Fokich was scolded on another account as well. About the gold coins and currency notes treasured below the floor of his apartment. Begemoth declares that all this will be of no use, as he is going to die of cancer of liver after nine months in the government hospital.

Fokich comes out, but he remembers that he has forgotten his hat in apartment No50; when he goes back he is given back his hat by Hella; as soon as he puts on the hat on his head, it turns into a kitten, who scratched his head and jumps away from there.

Fokich goes to the doctor and pleads to save him from this cancer.

Bulgakov introduces two doctors as well in this chapter. Dr Bouret and Dr  Kuzmin.

The doctors are depicted in a dignified way. Prof Kuzmin refuses to take any extra money from Fokich, examines him thoroughly and declares that as of now, he has no trace of any cancer in his body.

But Bulgakov teases the doctor as well…..the currency notes left by Fokich on his table turn into a kitten, then into a sparrow who was dancing on one leg and winking at the professor.

Professor Kuzmin tries to call Prof Bouret, to find out what is the meaning of all this,  but instead of calling Bouret, called a leech bureau, said he was Professor Kuzmin, and asked them to send some leeches to his house at once.

Hanging up the receiver, the professor turned to his desk again and straight away let out a scream.

At this desk sat a woman in a nurse's headscarf, holding a handbag with the word 'Leeches' written on it. The professor screamed as he looked at her mouth: it was a man's mouth, crooked, stretching from ear to ear, with a single fang. The nurse's eyes were dead.

'This bit of cash I'll just pocket,' the nurse said in a male basso, `no point in letting it lie about here.' She raked up the labels with a bird's claw and began melting into air.

Two hours passed. Professor Kuzmin sat in his bedroom on the bed, with leeches hanging from his temples, behind his ears, and on his neck. At Kuzmin's feet, on a quilted silk blanket, sat the grey-moustached Professor Bouret, looking at Kuzmin with condolence and comforting him, saying it was all nonsense.

What made Bulgakov punish the doctor; I am not able to guess. The dancing sparrow had broken the photograph showing the batch of ’94 pass out students from the medical college….may be something had gone wrong in the Kiev Medical Institute? Well, Bulgakov graduated from there….

If you can enlighten me on this account, I shall be very happy.

So, we see that Poplavsky was punished for his greed, his desire to possess the flat in Moscow; Fokich was punished for adulteration in food items. Bulgakov had shown this pathetic situation of Dining Halls and restaurants in some other works also.

Many more incidents took place in Moscow on that night, on Friday. We can say that Woland and his team was in full form to punish those who deserved punishment for various social misdeeds.

Bulgakov does not mention all of them in this chapter as he is in a hurry to visit Margarita.

We shall follow him…..

Reading Master and Margarita - 17

Chapter 17

An Unquiet Day

Well, you remember that after the black-magic show in Variety hundreds of women were seen running on the Sadovaya without any clothes – their clothes were handed over to Fagot’s firm and they were wearing the most fashionable dresses provided to them by the firm;

Rimsky had a terrible encounter with Varenukha who was trying to kill him with the help of that green eyed, naked woman – he was saved thanks to the rooster!

Let us see what happens to the currency notes which were raining in the hall and picked up by the audience.

As the posters had declared, the show of black-magic was to take place for two days and so there were serpentine queues in front of Variety.

It was Friday.

All the officers of Variety had, as we know, vanished…Rimsky, Styopa Likhodeyev, Varenukha, and the only officer present there now was the book keeper Vasily Stepanovich Lastochkin.

As the confusion inside Variety was growing, people were constantly ringing and they wanted to find out where are the officers. Rimsky’s wife came rushing and started pleading that her husband be found…

Something unbelievable had happened…police started inquiring about the scandalous show…

Who was the magician? What was his name? No one knew. When someone reported that it could be Foland or Woland, the in-tourist bureau was contacted and they had just no information about any Foland or Woland;

The posters were there, but over the night new posters were pasted on them, not a single copy of them was available;

Who gave permission for the show? Who gave the advance amount to the magician? Where are papers related to this transaction? Nothing was available.

The courier boy informed that Woland was put up in Styopa’s flat, they went there: Styopa had already disappeared; his maid Grunya had disappeared, president of the housing society had disappeared; even the secretary had disappeared.

A sniffer dog was taken to Rimsky’s cabinet…she started howling, climbed up the window frame, tried to jump out of it , started growling…then she went to the taxi stand and lost track of everything….

A big notice was put up on the gate of Variety that there will be no shows for a few days…the crowd dispersed angrily; they asked Vasily Stepanovich to deposit 21,711 roubles, that was the collection from yesterday’s show, into the recreation commission, and give them a report about last evening’s show.

Vasily Stepanovich decided to go by a taxi. To his surprise, all the cars that were standing at the Taxi stand ran away from there as soon as they noticed the passenger with a bloated bag in his hands. A third cab driver inquired whether he has any change with him and when Vasily Stepanovich showed smaller currency notes to the driver, was he allowed to sit inside the cab. And this is what he found out from the driver:

 “No change, is that it?' the bookkeeper asked timidly.

`A pocket full of change!' the driver bawled, and the eyes in the mirror went bloodshot. 'It's my third case today. And the same thing happened with the others, too. Some son of a bitch gives me a tenner, I give him change - four-fifty. He gets out, the scum! About five minutes later, I look: instead of a tenner, it's a label from a seltzer bottle!' Here the driver uttered several unprintable words. 'Another one, beyond Zubovskaya. A tenner. I give him three rubles change. He leaves. I go to my wallet, there's a bee there - zap in the finger! Ah, you! ...' and again the driver pasted on some unprintable words.  'And no tenner. Yesterday, in the Variety here' (unprintable words), 'some vermin of a conjurer did a séance with ten-rouble bills' (unprintable words)...

The bookkeeper went numb, shrank into himself, and pretended it was the first time he had heard even the word 'Variety', while thinking to himself:

'Oh-oh! ...'

So, that is what was happening to the currency notes which people had grabbed in the Variety.

When Vasily Stepanovich reached the recreation commission’s office he noticed complete turmoil in this office.

The secretary of the Chief was howling, there was an empty suit sitting in the chair behind the huge table and writing with a dry pen. There was neither head nor neck above the collar of the suit, there were no hands peeping out of the sleeves…

He was told by the secretary of the Commission-Chief :

  “Imagine, I'm sitting here,' Anna Richardovna recounted, shaking with agitation, again clutching at the bookkeeper's sleeve, 'and a cat walks in. Black, big as a behemoth. Of course, I shout "scat" to it. Out it goes, and in comes a fat fellow instead, also with a sort of cat-like mug, and says:

"What are you doing, citizen, shouting 'scat' at visitors?" And - whoosh - straight to Prokhor Petrovich. Of course, I run after him, shouting: "Are you out of your mind?"

 And this brazen-face goes straight to Prokhor Petrovich and sits down opposite him in the armchair. Well, that one ... he's the kindest-hearted man, but edgy. He blew up, I don't deny it. An edgy man, works like an ox - he blew up. "Why do you barge in here unannounced?" he says. And that brazen-face, imagine, sprawls in the armchair and says, smiling:

"I've come," he says, "to discuss a little business with you."

 Prokhor Petrovich blew up again:

"I'm busy." And the other one, just think, answers: "You're not busy with anything ..."

 Eh? Well, here, of course, Prokhor Petrovich's patience ran out, and he shouted: "What is all this? Get him out of here, devil take me!" And that one, imagine, smiles and says: "Devil take you? That, in fact, can be done!" And - bang! Before I had time to scream, I look: the one with the cat's mug is gone, and th ... there ... sits ... the suit ... Waaa! ...'

Stretching her mouth, which had lost all shape entirely, Anna Richardovna howled.

Vasily Stepanovich rushes out of this office and goes to its branch which was situated nearby.

There too, complete disorder…

People were going on singing…nonstop…against their wish…but in a coordinated way, as if someone is directing them. And this is what he found out from them:

 'Excuse me, dear citizen,' Vassily Stepanovich addressed the girl, 'did a black cat pay you a visit?'

`What cat?' the girl cried in anger. 'An ass, it's an ass we've got sitting in the affiliate!' And adding to that: `Let him hear, I'll tell everything' - she indeed told what had happened.

It turned out that the manager of the city affiliate, 'who has made a perfect mess of lightened entertainment' (the girl's words), suffered from a mania for organizing all sorts of little clubs. 'Blew smoke in the authorities' eyes!' screamed the girl.

In the course of a year this manager had succeeded in organizing a club of Lermontov studies, of chess and checkers, of ping-pong, and of horseback riding. For the summer, he was threatening to organize clubs of fresh-water canoeing and alpinism. And so today, during lunch-break, this manager comes in ...' ...with some son of a bitch on his arm,' the girl went on, 'hailing from nobody knows where, in wretched checkered trousers, a cracked pince-nez, and ... with a completely impossible mug! ...'

And straight away, the girl said, he recommended him to all those eating in the affiliate's dining room as a prominent specialist in organizing choral-singing clubs.

The faces of the future alpinists darkened, but the manager immediately called on everyone to cheer up, while the specialist joked a little, laughed a little, and swore an oath that singing takes no time at all, but that, incidentally, there was a whole load of benefits to be derived from it.

Well, of course, as the girl said, the first to pop up were Fanov and Kosarchuk, well-known affiliate toadies, who announced that they would sign up. Here the rest of the staff realized that there was no way around the singing, and they, too, had to sign up for the club. They decided to sing during the lunch break, since the rest of the time was taken up by Lermontov and checkers.

The manager, to set an example, declared that he was a tenor, and everything after that went as in a bad dream. The checkered specialist-choirmaster bawled out:

'Do, mi, sol, do!' - dragged the most bashful from behind the bookcases, where they had tried to save themselves from singing, told Kosarchuk he had perfect pitch, began whining, squealing, begging them to be kind to an old singing-master, tapped the tuning fork on his knuckle, beseeched them to strike up 'Glorious Sea'.

Strike up they did. And gloriously. The checkered one really knew his business. They finished the first verse. Here the director excused himself, said: `Back in a minute...', and disappeared.

They thought he would actually come back in a minute. But ten minutes went by and he was not there. The staff was overjoyed - he had run away!

Then suddenly, somehow of themselves, they began the second verse. They were all led by Kosarchuk, who may not have had perfect pitch, but did have a rather pleasant high tenor. They sang it through. No director! They moved to their places, but had not managed to sit down when, against their will, they began to sing. To stop was impossible. After three minutes of silence, they would strike up again. Silence - strike up! Then they realized that they were in trouble. The manager locked himself in his office from shame!”

The doctors administer some tranquilisers to the singers and they are taken to Stravinsky’s clinic!   

So, this was another character of the black magic show, who had created havoc here.

Half an hour later, the bookkeeper, who had lost his head completely, reached the financial sector, hoping finally to get rid of the box-office money. Having learned from experience by now, he first peeked cautiously into the oblong hall where, behind frosted-glass windows with gold lettering, the staff was sitting. Here the bookkeeper discovered no signs of alarm or scandal. It was quiet, as it ought to be in a decent institution.

Vassily Stepanovich stuck his head through the window with 'Cash Deposits' written over it, greeted some unfamiliar clerk, and politely asked for a deposit slip.

'What do you need it for?' the clerk in the window asked.

The bookkeeper was amazed.

'I want to turn over some cash. I'm from the Variety.'

'One moment,' the clerk replied and instantly closed the opening in the window with a grille.

'Strange!...' thought the bookkeeper. His amazement was perfectly natural. It was the first time in his life that he had met with such a circumstance. Everybody knows how hard it is to get money; obstacles to it can always be found. But there had been no case in the bookkeeper's thirty years of experience when anyone, either an official or a private person, had had hard time accepting money.

But at last the little grille moved aside, and the bookkeeper again leaned to the window.

'Do you have a lot?' the clerk asked.

'Twenty-one thousand seven hundred and eleven rubles.'

'Oho!' the clerk answered ironically for some reason and handed the bookkeeper a green slip.

Knowing the form well, the bookkeeper instantly filled it out and began to untie the string on the bundle. When he unpacked his load, everything swam before his eyes, he murmured something painfully.

Foreign money flitted before his eyes: there were stacks of Canadian dollars, British pounds, Dutch guldens, Latvian lats, Estonian kroons...

'There he is, one of those tricksters from the Variety!' a menacing voice resounded over the dumbstruck bookkeeper. And straight away Vassily Stepanovich was arrested.

Bulgakov has disclosed what all happens in the recreation commission.

You may wonder what was Vasily Stepanovich’s fault? Why was he arrested? 

Well, because he was going to REPORT about the black magic show to the authorities….the last of the officers of Variety too disappears!