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…
कोई टिप्पणी नहीं:
एक टिप्पणी भेजें
टिप्पणी: केवल इस ब्लॉग का सदस्य टिप्पणी भेज सकता है.