Reading Master and Margarita - 33

Chapter 33

Epilogue

Everything did not end with Woland’s departure from Moscow. He lived in public memory through various rumours. Rumours reached even the far flung areas of the country.

Many arrests were made. Those whose names started with Koro- and Wol- were invariably arrested: these included Nine Korovins, four Korovkins, two Korovaevs; also arrested were Wolman, Wolper, Volodins, Volokh, Wetchinkevich….this is not satire, this is how people of similar names were arrested so that a particular suspect does not escape.

Many cats were arrested…

They tried to explain about the happenings during those three days and explained that a very efficient gang of robbers had visited Moscow who knew special kind of hypnotizing tricks. Thus many things were explained….they had to admit that THERE WAS SOMEONE in Moscow who had masterminded these events: burning of Griboedov House, Murder of Berlioz and Count Michael could not be ignored, they said that Margarita and Natasha were kidnapped because of their beauty…what they could not explain was the strange disappearance of patient No 118 from Stravinsky’s clinic whose name too was not known.

Let’s take stock of things in Bulgakov’s own magical words:

      

“And so, almost everything was explained, and the investigation came to an end, as everything generally comes to an end.

Several years passed, and the citizens began to forget Woland, Koroviev and the rest. Many changes took place in the lives of those who suffered from Woland and his company, and however trifling and insignificant those changes are, they still ought to be noted.

Georges Bengalsky, for instance, after spending three months in the clinic, recovered and left it, but had to give up his work at the Variety, and that at the hottest time, when the public was flocking after tickets: the memory of black magic and its exposure proved very tenacious.

Bengalsky left the Variety, for he understood that to appear every night before two thousand people, to be inevitably recognized and endlessly subjected to jeering questions of how he liked it better, with or without his head, was much too painful.

And, besides that, the master of ceremonies had lost a considerable dose of his gaiety, which is so necessary in his profession. He remained with the unpleasant, burdensome habit of falling, every spring during the full moon, into a state of anxiety, suddenly clutching his neck, looking around fearfully and weeping. These fits would pass, but all the same, since he had them, he could not continue in his former occupation, and so the master of ceremonies retired and started living

on his savings, which, by his modest reckoning, were enough to last him fifteen years.

He left and never again met Varenukha, who has gained universal popularity and affection by his responsiveness and politeness, incredible even among theatre administrators. The free-pass seekers, for instance, never refer to him otherwise than as father-benefactor. One can call the Variety at any time and always hear in the receiver a soft but sad voice:

`May I help you?' And to the request that Varenukha be called to the phone, the same voice hastens to answer: 'At your service.' And, oh, how Ivan Savelyevich has suffered from his own politeness!

Styopa Likhodeev was to talk no more over the phone at the Variety. Immediately after his release from the clinic, where he spent eight days, Styopa was transferred to Rostov, taking up the position of manager of a large food store. Rumour has it that he has stopped drinking cheap wine altogether and drinks only vodka with blackcurrant buds, which has greatly improved his health.

They say he has become taciturn and keeps away from women.

The removal of Stepan Bogdanovich from the Variety did not bring Rimsky the joy of which he had been so greedily dreaming over the past several years. After the clinic and Kislovodsk, old, old as could be, his head wagging, the findirector submitted a request to be dismissed from the Variety. The interesting thing was that this request was brought to the Variety by Rimsky's wife.

Grigory Danilovich himself found it beyond his strength to visit, even during the daytime, the building where he had seen the cracked window-pane flooded with moonlight and the long arm making its way to the lower latch.

Having left the Variety, the findirector took a job with a children's marionette theatre in Zamoskvorechye. In this theatre he no longer had to run into the much-esteemed Arkady Apollonovich Semplevarov on matters of acoustics. The latter had been promptly transferred to Briansk and appointed manager of a mushroom cannery. The Muscovites now eat salted and pickled mushrooms and cannot praise them enough, and they rejoice exceedingly over this transfer. Since it is a bygone thing, we may now say that Arkady Apollonovich's relations with acoustics never worked out very well, and as they had been, so they remained, no matter how he

tried to improve them.

Among persons who have broken with the theatre, apart from Arkady Apollonovich, mention should be made of Nikanor Ivanovich Bosoy, though he had been connected with the theatre in no other way than by his love for free tickets. Nikanor Ivanovich not only goes to no sort of theatre, either paying or free, but even changes countenance at any theatrical conversation.

Besides the theatre, he has come to hate, not to a lesser but to a still greater degree, the poet Pushkin and the talented actor Sawa Potapovich Kurolesov. The latter to such a degree that last year, seeing a black-framed announcement in the newspaper that Sawa Potapovich had suffered a stroke in the full bloom of his career, Nikanor Ivanovich turned so purple that he almost followed after Sawa Potapovich, and bellowed: `Serves him right!'

Moreover, that same evening Nikanor Ivanovich, in whom the death of the popular actor had evoked a great many painful memories, alone, in the sole company of the full moon shining on Sadovaya, got terribly drunk. And with each drink, the cursed line of hateful figures got longer, and in this line were Dunchil, Sergei Gerardovich, and the beautiful Ida Herculanovna, and that red-haired owner of fighting geese, and the candid Kanavkin, Nikolai.

Well, and what on earth happened to them? Good heavens! Precisely nothing happened to them, or could happen, since they never actually existed, as that affable artiste, the master of ceremonies, never existed, nor the theatre itself, nor that old pinchfist of an aunt Porokhovnikova, who kept currency rotting in the cellar, and there certainly were no golden trumpets or impudent cooks. All this Nikanor Ivanovich merely dreamed under the influence of the nasty Koroviev. The

only living person to fly into this dream was precisely Sawa Potapovich, the actor, and he got mixed up in it only because he was ingrained in Nikanor Ivanovich's memory owing to his frequent performances on the radio. He existed, but the rest did not.

So, maybe Aloisy Mogarych did not exist either? Oh, no! He not only existed, but he exists even now and precisely in the post given up by Rimsky, that is, the post of findirector of the Variety.

Coming to his senses about twenty-four hours after his visit to Woland, on a train somewhere near Vyatka, Aloisy realized that, having for some reason left Moscow in a darkened state of mind, he had forgotten to put on his trousers, but instead had stolen, with an unknown purpose, the completely useless household register of the builder. Paying a colossal sum of money to the conductor, Aloisy acquired from him an old and greasy pair of pants, and in Vyatka he turned back.

But, alas, he did not find the builder's little house. The decrepit trash had been licked clean away by a fire. But Aloisy was an extremely enterprising man. Two weeks later he was living in a splendid room on Briusovsky Lane, and a few months later he was sitting in Rimsky's office. And as Rimsky had once suffered because of Styopa, so now Varenukha was tormented because of Aloisy.

Ivan Savelyevich's only dream is that this Aloisy should be removed somewhere out of sight, because, as Varenukha sometimes whispers in intimate company, he supposedly has never in his life met 'such scum as this Aloisy', and he supposedly expects anything you like from this Aloisy.

However, the administrator is perhaps prejudiced. Aloisy has not been known for any shady business, or for any business at all, unless of course we count his appointing someone else to replace the barman Sokov. For Andrei Fokich died of liver cancer in the clinic of the First MSU some ten months after Woland's appearance in Moscow.

Yes, several years have passed, and the events truthfully described in this book have healed over and faded from memory. But not for everyone, not for everyone.

Each year, with the festal spring full moon,' a man of about thirty or thirty-odd appears towards evening under the lindens at the Patriarch's Ponds. A reddish-haired, green-eyed, modestly dressed man. He is a researcher at the Institute of History and Philosophy, Professor Ivan Nikolaevich Ponyrev.

Coming under the lindens, he always sits down on the same bench on which he sat that evening when Berlioz, long forgotten by all, saw the moon breaking to pieces for the last time in his life. Whole now, white at the start of the evening, then gold with a dark horse-dragon, it floats over the former poet Ivan Nikolaevich and at the same time stays in place at its height.

Ivan Nikolaevich is aware of everything, he knows and understands everything. He knows that as a young man he fell victim to criminal hypnotists and was afterwards treated and cured. But he also knows that there are things he cannot manage. He cannot manage this spring full moon.

As soon as it begins to approach, as soon as the luminary that once hung higher than the two five-branched candlesticks begins to swell and fill with gold, Ivan Nikolaevich becomes anxious, nervous, he loses appetite and sleep, waiting till the moon ripens. And when the full moon comes, nothing can keep Ivan Nikolaevich at home. Towards evening he goes out and walks to the Patriarch's Ponds.

Sitting on the bench, Ivan Nikolaevich openly talks to himself, smokes, squints now at the moon, now at the memorable turnstile.

Ivan Nikolaevich spends an hour or two like this. Then he leaves his place and, always following the same itinerary, goes with empty and unseeing eyes through Spiridonovka to the lanes of the Arbat.

He passes the kerosene shop, turns by a lopsided old gaslight, and steals up to a fence, behind which he sees a luxuriant, though as yet unclothed, garden, and in it a Gothic mansion, moon- washed on the side with the triple bay window and dark on the other.

The professor does not know what draws him to the fence or who lives in the mansion, but he does know that there is no fighting with himself on the night of the full moon. Besides, he knows that he will inevitably see one and the same thing in the garden behind the fence.

He will see an elderly and respectable man with a little beard, wearing a pince-nez, and with slightly piggish features, sitting on a bench. Ivan Nikolaevich always finds this resident of the mansion in one and the same dreamy pose, his eyes turned towards the moon. It is known to Ivan Nikolaevich that, after admiring the moon, the seated man will unfailingly turn his gaze to the bay windows and fix it on them, as if expecting that they would presently be flung open and something extraordinary would appear on the window-sill. The whole sequel Ivan Nikolaevich knows by heart.

Here he must bury himself deeper behind the fence, for presently the seated man will begin to turn his head restlessly, to snatch at something in the air with a wandering gaze, to smile rapturously, and then he will suddenly clasp his hands in a sort of sweet anguish, and then he will murmur simply and rather loudly:

'Venus! Venus! ... Ah, fool that I am! ...'

'Gods, gods!' Ivan Nikolaevich will begin to whisper, hiding behind the fence and never taking his kindling eyes off the mysterious stranger. 'Here is one more of the moon's victims ... Yes, one more victim, like me...'

And the seated man will go on talking:

'Ah, fool that I am! Why, why didn't I fly off with her? What were you afraid of, old ass? Got yourself a certificate! Ah, suffer now, you old cretin! ...'

It will go on like this until a window in the dark part of the mansion bangs, something whitish appears in it, and an unpleasant female voice rings out:

'Nikolai Ivanovich, where are you? What is this fantasy? Want to catch malaria? Come and have tea!'

Here, of course, the seated man will recover his senses and reply in a lying voice:

'I wanted a breath of air, a breath of air, dearest! The air is so nice! ...'

And here he will get up from the bench, shake his fist on the sly at the closing ground-floor window, and trudge back to the house.

'Lying, he's lying! Oh, gods, how he's lying!' Ivan Nikolaevich mutters as he leaves the fence.

'It's not the air that draws him to the garden, he sees something at the time of this spring full moon, in the garden, up there! Ah, I'd pay dearly to penetrate his mystery, to know who this Venus is that he's lost and now fruitlessly feels for in the air, trying to catch her! ...'

And the professor returns home completely ill. His wife pretends not to notice his condition and urges him to go to bed. But she herself does not go to bed and sits by the lamp with a book, looking with grieving eyes at the sleeper. She knows that Ivan Nikolaevich will wake up at dawn with a painful cry, will begin to weep and thrash. Therefore there lies before her, prepared ahead of time, on the tablecloth, under the lamp, a syringe in alcohol and an ampoule of liquid the colour of dark tea.

The poor woman, tied to a gravely ill man, is now free and can sleep without apprehensions.

After the injection, Ivan Nikolaevich will sleep till morning with a blissful face, having sublime and blissful dreams unknown to her.

It is always one and the same thing that awakens the scholar and draws pitiful cries from him on the night of the full moon. He sees some unnatural, noseless executioner who, leaping up and hooting somehow with his voice, sticks his spear into the heart of Gestas, who is tied to a post and has gone insane. But it is not the executioner who is frightening so much as the unnatural lighting in this dream, caused by some dark cloud boiling and heaving itself upon the earth, as happens

only during world catastrophes.

After the injection, everything changes before the sleeping man. A broad path of moonlight stretches from his bed to the window, and a man in a white cloak with blood-red lining gets on to this path and begins to walk towards the moon. Beside him walks a young man in a torn chiton and with a disfigured face. The walkers talk heatedly about something, they argue, they want to reach some understanding.

'Gods, gods!' says that man in the cloak, turning his haughty face to his companion. `Such a banal execution! But, please,' here the face turns from haughty to imploring, `tell me it never happened! I implore you, tell me, it never happened?'

'Well, of course it never happened,' his companion replies in a hoarse voice, 'you imagined it.'

'And you can swear it to me?' the man in the cloak asks ingratiatingly.

`I swear it!' replies his companion, and his eyes smile for some reason.

'I need nothing more!' the man in the cloak exclaims in a husky voice and goes ever higher towards the moon, drawing his companion along. Behind them a gigantic, sharp-eared dog walks calmly and majestically.

Then the moonbeam boils up, a river of moonlight begins to gush from it and pours out in all directions. The moon rules and plays, the moon dances and frolics. Then a woman of boundless beauty forms herself in the stream, and by the hand she leads out to Ivan a man overgrown with beard who glances around fearfully. Ivan Nikolaevich recognizes him at once. It is number one-eighteen, his nocturnal guest. In his dream Ivan Nikolaevich reaches his arms out to him and asks greedily:

'So it ended with that?'

'It ended with that, my disciple,' answers number one-eighteen, and then the woman comes up to Ivan and says:

'Of course, with that. Everything has ended, and everything ends... And I will kiss you on the forehead, and everything with you will be as it should be ...'

She bends over Ivan and kisses him on the forehead, and Ivan reaches out to her and peers into her eyes, but she retreats, retreats, and together with her companion goes towards the moon...

Then the moon begins to rage, it pours streams of light down right on Ivan, it sprays light in all directions, a flood of moonlight engulfs the room, the light heaves, rises higher, drowns the bed. It is then that Ivan Nikolaevich sleeps with a blissful face.

The next morning he wakes up silent but perfectly calm and well. His needled memory grows quiet, and until the next full moon no one will trouble the professor - neither the nose less killer of Gestas, nor the cruel fifth procurator of Judea, the equestrian Pontius Pilate.”

     

Magnificently written epigraph….the crowning glory!

Bulgakov has summed up the fate of each and every character….the readers too are completely satisfied….

Reading Master and Margarita - 32

Chapter 32

Forgiveness and Eternal Refuge

The chapter begins on a melancholy note. Bulgakov is highlighting their suffering and also telling the readers why they are not at all sad to go away from the earth:

“Gods, my gods! How sad the evening earth! How mysterious the mists over the swamps! He who has wandered in these mists, he who has suffered much before death, he who has flown over this earth bearing on himself too heavy a burden, knows it. The weary man knows it. And without regret he leaves the mists of the earth, its swamps and rivers, with a light heart he gives himself into the hands of death, knowing that she alone can bring him peace.”

All of them were silent, as they were leaving behind the earth; as the large red Moon came in the sky to welcome them, they came into their real shapes. Bulgakov mesmerizes readers with his description: there is magic in his descriptions, hypnotism:

“Night began to cover forests and fields with its black shawl, night lit melancholy little lights somewhere far below - now no longer interesting and necessary either for Margarita or for the master - alien lights. Night was outdistancing the cavalcade, it sowed itself over them from above, casting white specks of stars here and there in the saddened sky.

Night thickened, flew alongside, caught at the riders' cloaks and, tearing them from their shoulders, exposed the deceptions. And when Margarita, blown upon by the cool wind, opened her eyes, she saw how the appearance of them all was changing as they flew to their goal. And when, from beyond the edge of the forest, the crimson and full moon began rising to meet them, all deceptions vanished, fell into the swamp, the unstable magic garments drowned in the mists.

Hardly recognizable as Koroviev-Fagott, the self-appointed interpreter to the mysterious consultant who needed no interpreting, was he who now flew just beside Woland, to the right of the master's friend. In place of him who had left Sparrow Hills in a ragged circus costume under the name of Koroviev-Fagott, there now rode, softly clinking the golden chains of the bridle, a dark-violet knight with a most gloomy and never-smiling face. He rested his chin on his chest, he did not look at the moon, he was not interested in the earth, he was thinking something of his own, flying beside Woland.

"Why has he changed so?' Margarita quietly asked Woland to the whistling of the wind.

‘This knight once made an unfortunate joke,' replied Woland, turning his face with its quietly burning eye to Margarita. 'The pun he thought up, in a discussion about light and darkness, was not altogether good. And after that the knight had to go on joking a bit more and longer than he supposed. But this is one of the nights when accounts are settled. The knight has paid up and closed his account.'

Night also tore off Behemoth's fluffy tail, pulled off his fur and scattered it in tufts over the swamps. He who had been a cat, entertaining the prince of darkness, now turned out to be a slim youth, a demon-page, the best jester the world has ever seen. Now he, too, grew quiet and flew noiselessly, setting his young face towards the light that streamed from the moon.

At the far side, the steel of his armour glittering, flew Azazello. The moon also changed his face. The absurd, ugly fang disappeared without a trace, and the albugo on his eye proved false. Azazello's eyes were both the same, empty and black, and his face was white and cold. Now Azazello flew in his true form, as the demon of the waterless desert, the killer-demon.”

They come to an open place where Woland gets down from his horse and shows them a man:

“Thus they flew in silence for a long time, until the place itself began to change below them.

The melancholy forests drowned in earthly darkness and drew with them the dim blades of the rivers. Boulders appeared and began to gleam below, with black gaps between them where the moonlight did not penetrate.

Woland reined in his horse on a stony, joyless, flat summit, and the riders then proceeded at a walk, listening to the crunch of flint and stone under the horses' shoes. Moonlight flooded the platform greenly and brightly, and soon Margarita made out an armchair in this deserted place and in it the white figure of a seated man. Possibly the seated man was deaf, or else too sunk in his own thoughts. He did not hear the stony earth shudder under the horses' weight, and the riders approached him without disturbing him.

The moon helped Margarita well, it shone better than the best electric lantern, and Margarita saw that the seated man, whose eyes seemed blind, rubbed his hands fitfully, and peered with those same unseeing eyes at the disc of the moon. Now Margarita saw that beside the heavy stone chair, on which sparks glittered in the moonlight, lay a dark, huge, sharp-eared dog, and, like its master, it gazed anxiously at the moon. Pieces of a broken jug were scattered by the seated man's

feet and an undrying black-red puddle spread there. The riders stopped their horses.

Your novel has been read,' Woland began, turning to the master, 'and the only thing said about it was that, unfortunately, it is not finished. So, then, I wanted to show you your hero. For about two thousand years he has been sitting on this platform and sleeping, but when the full moon comes, as you see, he is tormented by insomnia. It torments not only him, but also his faithful guardian, the dog.

If it is true that cowardice is the most grievous vice, then the dog at least is not guilty of it.

Storms were the only thing the brave dog feared. Well, he who loves must share the lot of the one he loves.'

`What is he saying?' asked Margarita, and her perfectly calm face clouded over with

compassion.

'He says one and the same thing,' Woland replied. `He says that even the moon gives him no peace, and that his is a bad job. That is what he always says when he is not asleep, and when he sleeps, he dreams one and the same thing: there is a path of moonlight, and he wants to walk down it and talk with the prisoner Ha-Nozri, because, as he insists, he never finished what he was saying that time, long ago, on the fourteenth day of the spring month of Nisan. But, alas, for some reason he never manages to get on to this path, and no one comes to him. Then there's no help for it, he must talk to himself. However, one does need some diversity, and to his talk about the moon he often adds that of all things in the world, he most hates his immortality and his unheard-of fame. He maintains that he would willingly exchange his lot for that of the ragged tramp Matthew Levi.'

Margarita comments :

`Twelve thousand moons for one moon long ago, isn't that too much?' asked Margarita.

`Repeating the story with Frieda?' said Woland. 'But don't trouble yourself here, Margarita. Everything will turn out right, the world is built on that.'

'Let him go!' Margarita suddenly cried piercingly, as she had cried once as a witch, and at this cry a stone fell somewhere in the mountains and tumbled down the ledges into the abyss, filling the mountains with rumbling. But Margarita could not have said whether it was the rumbling of its fall or the rumbling of satanic laughter. In any case, Woland was laughing as he glanced at Margarita and said:

'Don't shout in the mountains, he's accustomed to avalanches anyway, and it won't rouse him.

You don't need to ask for him, Margarita, because the one he so yearns to talk with has already asked for him.' Here Woland turned to the master and said:

'Well, now you can finish your novel with one phrase!'

The master seemed to have been expecting this, as he stood motionless and looked at the seated procurator. He cupped his hands to his mouth and cried out so that the echo leaped over the unpeopled and unforested mountains:

'You're free! You're free! He's waiting for you!'

The mountains turned the master's voice to thunder, and by this same thunder they were destroyed. The accursed rocky walls collapsed. Only the platform with the stone armchair remained. Over the black abyss into which the walls had gone, a boundless city lit up, dominated by gleaming idols above a garden grown luxuriously over many thousands of moons. The path of moonlight so long awaited by the procurator stretched right to this garden, and the first to rush down it was the sharp-eared dog. The man in the white cloak with blood-red lining rose from the armchair and shouted something in a hoarse, cracked voice. It was impossible to tell whether he was weeping or laughing, or what he shouted. It could only be seen that, following his faithful guardian, he, too, rushed headlong down the path of moonlight.

`I'm to follow him there?' the master asked anxiously, holding the bridle.

'No,' replied Woland, 'why run after what is already finished?'

‘There, then?' the master asked, turning and pointing back, where the recently abandoned city with the gingerbread towers of its convent, with the sun broken to smithereens in its windows, now wove itself behind them.

'Not there, either,' replied Woland, and his voice thickened and flowed over the rocks.

`Romantic master! He, whom the hero you invented and have just set free so yearns to see, has read your novel.' Here Woland turned to Margarita: `Margarita Nikolaevna! It is impossible not to believe that you have tried to think up the best future for the master, but, really, what I am offering you, and what Yeshua has asked for you, is better still! Leave them to each other,' Woland said, leaning towards the master's saddle from his own, pointing to where the procurator had gone, 'let's not interfere with them. And maybe they'll still arrive at something.' Here Woland waved his arm in the direction of Yershalaim, and it went out.

'And there, too,' Woland pointed behind them, 'what are you going to do in the little

basement?' Here the sun broken up in the glass went out.

'Why?' Woland went on persuasively and gently, 'oh, thrice-romantic master, can it be that you don't want to go strolling with your friend in the daytime under cherry trees just coming into bloom, and in the evening listen to Schubert's music? Can it be that you won't like writing with a goose quill by candlelight? Can it be that you don't want to sit over a retort like Faust, in hopes that you'll succeed in forming a new homunculus? There! There! The house and the old servant are already waiting for you, the candles are already burning, and soon they will go out, because you will immediately meet the dawn. Down this path, master, this one! Farewell! It's time for me to go!'

'Farewell!' Margarita and the master answered Woland in one cry. Then the black Woland, heedless of any road, threw himself into a gap, and his retinue noisily hurried down after him.

There were no rocks, no platform, no path of moonlight, no Yershalaim around. The black steeds also vanished. The master and Margarita saw the promised dawn. It began straight away, immediately after the midnight moon.

The master walked with his friend in the brilliance of the first rays of morning over a mossy little stone bridge. They crossed it. The faithful lovers left the stream behind and walked down the sandy path.

'Listen to the stillness,' Margarita said to the master, and the sand rustled under her bare feet, `listen and enjoy what you were not given in life - peace. Look, there ahead is your eternal home, which you have been given as a reward. I can already see the Venetian window and the twisting vine, it climbs right up to the roof. Here is your home, your eternal home.

I know that in the evenings you will be visited by those you love, those who interest you and who will never trouble you. They will play for you, they will sing for you, you will see what light is in the room when the candles are burning. You will fall asleep, having put on your greasy and eternal nightcap, you will fall asleep with a smile on your lips. Sleep will strengthen you, you will reason wisely. And you will no longer be able to drive me away. I will watch over your sleep.'

Thus spoke Margarita, walking with the master to their eternal home, and it seemed to the master that Margarita's words flowed in the same way as the stream they had left behind flowed and whispered, and the master's memory, the master's anxious, needled memory began to fade.

Someone was setting the master free, as he himself had just set free the hero he had created. This hero had gone into the abyss, gone irrevocably, the son of the astrologer-king, forgiven on the eve of Sunday, the cruel fifth procurator of Judea, the equestrian Pontius Pilate.’

So, Master and Margarita finally attain eternal peace and happiness with Woland’s help.

Let’s think about Margarita’s comment about 12,000 moons….though Woland says  that Pontius Pilate is sitting here for the last 2000 years. In one translation, it is rendered as 24,000 moons, but Pevear chose to retain Bulgakov’s version…I too have done the same.

I am convinced that Bulgakov wants to point out at something.

Well, with reference to original Yeshua and Yerushalem, 2000 years was alright, that is when the A.D. began. But in our case, it is not really referring to the Holy Bible. So, let us try to see where does Bulgakov take us.

12,000 moons occur not in 1000 years but in 966 years. Let’s remember that Bulgakov was perfect in his dates….so if we go back and see what happened 966 years ago, we reach X century: (962 -974) corresponding to ( 1928 – 1940) when Bulgakov was writing his novel. This was the time when Kiev was founded by Prince Kie…about the beginning of Ryurikh Dynasty which was known for great warrior kings Oleg, Queen Olga, Igor, Svyatoslav, Vladimir. Interestingly Olga was the first to be christened. Later , it was Vladimir who christened Rus. So the period 962- 974 corresponds to advent of Christanity,  Kievskaya  Rus. Hence, we see that here too Bulgakov tells the readers that his novel is deeply rooted in the Russian soil, it has nothing to do with the Biblical legend.

Thus, having seen that Master & Margarita and safely and peacefully settled in their new and eternal abode, we go back to Moscow and see what happened to all those victims of Woland and his team….to the Epilogue!

Reading Master and Margarita - 31

Chapter 31

On Sparrow Hills

So, they left Stravinsky’s clinic and accompanied Azazello. On the Sparrow Hills Woland, Begemot and Koroviev are waiting for them.

Let us remember that Master and Margarita are going to leave Moscow forever. The following conversation takes place:

'We had to trouble you a little, Margarita Nikolaevna and Master,' Woland began after some silence, 'but you won't grudge me that. I don't think you will regret it. So, then,' he addressed the Master alone, 'bid farewell to the city. It's time for us to go,' Woland pointed with his black-gauntleted hand to where numberless suns melted the glass beyond the river, to where, above these suns, stood the mist, smoke and steam of the city scorched all day.

The Master threw himself out of the saddle, left the mounted ones, and ran to the edge of the hillside. The black cloak dragged on the ground behind him. The Master began to look at the city.

In the first moments a wringing sadness crept over his heart, but it very quickly gave wav to a sweetish anxiety, a wandering gypsy excitement.

`Forever! ... That needs to be grasped,' the master whispered and licked his dry, cracked lips.

He began to heed and take precise note of everything that went on in his soul. His excitement turned, as it seemed to him, into a feeling of deep and grievous offence. But it was unstable, vanished, and gave way for some reason to a haughty indifference, and that to a foretaste of enduring peace.

The group of riders waited silently for the master. The group of riders watched the black, long figure on the edge of the hillside gesticulate, now raising his head, as if trying to reach across the whole city with his eyes, to peer beyond its limits, now hanging his head down, as if studying the trampled, meager grass under his feet.

The silence was broken by the bored Behemoth. `Allow me, maître,' he began, 'to give a farewell whistle before the ride.'

Master is pouring out all the feelings of a humiliated heart, his state of mind is changing every minute. But when he returns back to Woland and company who were indulging in small funs waiting for him, he is quite composed. He is no longer sad that he is leaving his world, his literary world, this city which denied him the recognition that he deserved.

 He clutched his head and ran back to the group of waiting companions.

'Well, then,' Woland addressed him from the height of his steed, 'is your farewell completed?'

'Yes, it's completed,' the master replied and, having calmed down, looked directly and boldly into Woland's face.

And then over the hills like a trumpet blast rolled Woland's terrible voice:

'It's time!!' - and with it the sharp whistle and guffaw of Behemoth.

The steeds tore off, and the riders rose into the air and galloped. Margarita felt her furious steed champing and straining at the bit. Woland's cloak billowed over the heads of the cavalcade; the cloak began to cover the evening sky. When the black shroud was momentarily blown aside, behind them, but the city itself had long been gone. It was as if it had fallen through the earth - only mist and smoke were left...

And in Woland’s company, Master and Margarita start for their destination…..

Reading Master and Margarita - 30

Chapter 30

It's Time! It's Time!

Master and Margarita are in the basement of Arbat flat, Master is thinking that all this is still a magic and would disappear soon…the manuscripts, the food, Margarita and he would find himself back in Stravinsky’s clinic. Margarita assures him that what he had seen is true and that the Satan is going to set things right for them.

Now, Margarita looks carefully at Master and says:

'How you've suffered, how you've suffered, my poor one! I'm the only one who knows it. Look, you've got white threads in your hair, and an eternal crease by your lips! My only one, my dearest, don't think about anything! You've had to think too much, and now I'll think for you. And I promise you, I promise, that everything will be dazzlingly well!'

'I'm not afraid of anything, Margot,' the master suddenly answered her and raised his head, and he seemed to her the same as he had been when he was inventing that which he had never seen, but of which he knew for certain that it had been, 'not afraid, because I've already experienced it all. They tried too hard to frighten me, and cannot frighten me with anything anymore. But I pity you, Margot, that's the trick, that's why I keep saying it over and over. Come to your senses! Why do you have to ruin your life with a sick man and a beggar? Go back! I pity you, that's why I say it.'

'Oh, you, you ...' Margarita whispered, shaking her disheveled head, 'oh, you faithless, unfortunate man! ... Because of you I spent the whole night yesterday shivering and naked. I lost my nature and replaced it with a new one, I spent several months sitting in a dark closet thinking about one thing, about the storm over Yershalaim, I cried my eyes out, and now, when happiness has befallen us, you drive me away! Well, then I'll go, I'll go, but you should know that you are a cruel man! They've devastated your soul!

'

Bitter tenderness rose up in the master's heart, and, without knowing why, he began to weep, burying his face in Margarita's hair. Weeping herself, she whispered to him, and her fingers trembled on the master's temples.

'Yes, threads, threads ... before my eyes your head is getting covered with snow ... ah, my much-suffering head! Look what eyes you've got! There's a desert in them ... and the shoulders, the shoulders with their burden ... crippled, crippled ...' Margarita's speech was becoming incoherent, Margarita was shaking with tears.

Then the master wiped his eyes, raised Margarita from her knees, got up himself and said firmly:

'Enough. You've shamed me. Never again will I yield to faint-heartedness, or come back to this question, be reassured. I know that we're both the victims of our mental illness, which you perhaps got from me... Well, so we'll bear it together.'

Margarita put her lips close to the master's ear and whispered:

'I swear to you by your life, I swear by the astrologer's son whom, you guessed, that all will be well!'

'Fine, fine,' responded the master, and he added, laughing: 'Of course, when people have been robbed of everything, like you and me, they seek salvation from other-worldly powers! Well, so, I agree to seek there.'

'Well, there, there, now you're your old self, you're laughing,' replied Margarita, `and devil take you with your learned words. Other-worldly or not other-worldly, isn't it all the same?

Both of them were right. The intelligentsia was tortured so much…its soul was destroyed so that they don’t speak the truth. Here no name is mentioned, she only says, ‘they’, but it is understood….it is the NKVD.

And Master too was right when he says that people seek support from some non-earthly power to get things right.

As soon as they started to eat, enters Azazello. Well, we know that he is sent by Woland to set things right. Let’s see how does he go ahead:

“And just then a nasal voice came through the window: 'Peace be unto you.''

The master gave a start, but Margarita, already accustomed to the extraordinary, exclaimed:

'Why, it's Azazello! Ah, how nice, how good!' and, whispering to the master: 'You see, you see, we're not abandoned!' - she rushed to open the door.

'Cover yourself at least,' the master called after her.

'Spit on it,' answered Margarita, already in the corridor.

And there was Azazello bowing, greeting the master, and flashing his blind eye, while Margarita exclaimed:

'Ah, how glad I am! I've never been so glad in my life!

……

But forgive me, Azazello, for being naked!'

Azazello begged her not to worry, assuring her that he had seen not only naked women, but even women with their skin flayed clean off, and willingly sat down at the table, having first placed some package wrapped in dark brocade in the corner by the stove.

Margarita poured Azazello some cognac, and he willingly drank it. The master, not taking his eyes off him, quietly pinched his own left hand under the table. But the pinches did not help.

Azazello did not melt into air, and, to tell the truth, there was no need for that. There was nothing terrible in the short, reddish-haired man, unless it was his eye with albugo, but that occurs even without sorcery, or unless his clothes were not quite ordinary - some sort of cassock or cloak – but again, strictly considered, that also happens. He drank his cognac adroitly, too, as all good people do, by the glassful and without nibbling. From this same cognac the master's head became giddy, and he began to think:

'No, Margarita's right ... Of course, this is the devil's messenger sitting before me. No more than two nights ago, I myself tried to prove to Ivan that it was precisely Satan whom he had met at the Patriarch's Ponds, and now for some reason I got scared of the thought and started babbling something about hypnotists and hallucinations ... Devil there's any hypnotists in it! ...'

He began looking at Azazello more closely and became convinced that there was some constraint in his eyes, some thought that he would not reveal before its time. 'This is not just a visit, he's come on some errand,' thought the master.

His powers of observation did not deceive him. After drinking a third glass of cognac, which produced no effect in Azazello, the visitor spoke thus:

`A cosy little basement, devil take me! Only one question arises - what is there to do in this little basement?'

That's just what I was saying,' the master answered, laughing.

'Why do you trouble me, Azazello?' asked Margarita. 'We'll live somehow or other!'

'Please, please!' cried Azazello, 'I never even thought of troubling you. I say the same thing - somehow or other! Ah, yes! I almost forgot ... Messire sends his regards and has also asked me to tell you that he invites you to go on a little excursion with him - if you wish, of course. What do you say to that?'

Margarita nudged the master under the table with her leg.

‘With great pleasure,' replied the master, studying Azazello, who continued:

`We hope that Margarita Nikolaevna will also not decline the invitation?'

'I certainly will not,' said Margarita, and again her leg brushed against the master's.

`A wonderful thing!' exclaimed Azazello. 'I like that! One, two, and it's done! Not like that time in the Alexandrovsky Garden!'

'Ah, don't remind me, Azazello, I was stupid then. And anyhow you mustn't blame me too severely for it - you don't meet unclean powers every day!'

‘That you don't!' agreed Azazello. 'Wouldn't it be pleasant if it was every day!'

……..

'And again I forgot!' cried Azazello, slapping himself on the forehead. `I'm quite frazzled! Messire sends you a present,' here he adverted precisely to the master, 'a bottle of wine. I beg you to note that it's the same wine the procurator of Judea drank. Falernian wine.'

It was perfectly natural that such a rarity should arouse great attention in both Margarita and the master. Azazello drew from the piece of dark coffin brocade a completely mouldy jug. The wine was sniffed, poured into glasses, held up to the light in the window, which was disappearing before the storm.

‘To Woland's health!' exclaimed Margarita, raising her glass.

All three put their glasses to their lips and took big gulps. At once the pre-storm light began to fade in the master's eyes, his breath failed him, and he felt the end coming. He could still see the deathly pale Margarita, helplessly reaching her arms out to him, drop her head to the table and then slide down on the floor.

`Poisoner...' the master managed to cry out. He wanted to snatch the knife from the table and strike Azazello with it, but his hand slid strengthlessly from the tablecloth, everything around the master in the basement took on a black colour and then vanished altogether. He fell backwards and in falling cut the skin of his temple on the corner of his desk.

When the poisoned ones lay still, Azazello began to act. First of all, he rushed out of the window and a few instants later was in the house where Margarita Nikolaevna lived. The ever precise and accurate Azazello wanted to make sure that everything was carried out properly. And everything turned out to be in perfect order. Azazello saw a gloomy woman, who was waiting for her husband's return, come out of her bedroom, suddenly turn pale, clutch her heart, and cry helplessly:

'Natasha ... somebody ... come ...' and fall to the floor in the living room before reaching the study.

'Everything's in order,' said Azazello. A moment later he was beside the fallen lovers. Margarita lay with her face against the little rug. With his iron hands, Azazello turned her over like a doll, face to him, and peered at her. The face of the poisoned woman was changing before his eyes. Even in the gathering dusk of the storm, one could see the temporary witch's cast in her eyes and the cruelty and violence of her features disappear. The face of the dead woman brightened and finally softened, and the look of her bared teeth was no longer predatory but simply that of a suffering woman.

Then Azazello unclenched her white teeth and poured into her mouth several drops of the same wine with which he had poisoned her. Margarita sighed, began to rise without Azazello's help, sat up and asked weakly:

'Why, Azazello, why? What have you done to me?'

She saw the outstretched master, shuddered, and whispered: 'I didn't expect this ... murderer!'

'Oh, no, no,' answered Azazello, 'he'll rise presently. Ah, why are you so nervous?'

Margarita believed him at once, so convincing was the red-headed demon's voice. She jumped up, strong and alive, and helped to give the outstretched man a drink of wine. Opening his eyes, he gave a dark look and with hatred repeated his last word:'Poisoner...'

'Ah, insults are the usual reward for a good job!' replied Azazello.

'Are you blind? Well, quickly recover your sight!'

Here the master rose, looked around with alive and bright eyes, and asked:

'What does this new thing mean?'

'It means,' replied Azazello, 'that it's time for us to go. The storm is already thundering, do you hear? It's getting dark. The steeds are pawing the ground, your little garden is shuddering. Say farewell, quickly say farewell to your little basement.'

'Ah, I understand...' the master said, glancing around, 'you've killed us, we're dead. Oh, how intelligent that is! And how timely! Now I understand everything.'

'Oh, for pity's sake,' replied Azazello, 'is it you I hear talking? Your friend calls you a master, you can think, so how can you be dead? Is it necessary, in order to consider yourself alive, to sit in a basement and dress yourself in a shirt and hospital drawers? It's ridiculous! ...'

'I understand everything you're saying,' the master cried out, 'don't go on! You're a thousand times right!'

'Great Woland!' Margarita began to echo him. 'Great Woland! He thought it out much better than I did! But the novel, the novel,' she shouted to the master, 'take the novel with you wherever you fly!' "

'No need,' replied the master, 'I remember it by heart.'

`But you won't ... you won't forget a single word of it?' Margarita asked, pressing herself to her lover and wiping the blood from his cut temple.

'Don't worry. I'll never forget anything now,' he replied.

'Fire, then!' cried Azazello. 'Fire, with which all began and with which we end it all.'

'Fire!' Margarita cried terribly. The little basement window banged, the curtain was beaten aside by the wind. The sky thundered merrily and briefly. Azazello thrust his clawed hand into the stove, pulled out a smoking brand, and set fire to the tablecloth. Then he set fire to the stack of old newspapers on the sofa, and next to the manuscripts and the window curtain.

The master, already drunk with the impending ride, flung some book from the shelf on to the table, ruffled its pages in the flame of the tablecloth, and the book blazed up merrily.

'Burn, burn, former life!'

'Burn, suffering!' cried Margarita.

The room was already swaying in crimson pillars, and along with the smoke the three ran out of the door, went up the stone steps, and came to the yard. The first thing they saw there was the landlord's cook sitting on the ground. Beside her lay spilled potatoes and several bunches of onions. The cook's state was comprehensible. Three black steeds snorted by the shed, twitching, sending up fountains of earth. Margarita mounted first, then Azazello, and last the master. The cook moaned and wanted to raise her hand to make the sign of the cross, but Azazello shouted menacingly from the saddle:

'I'll cut your hand off!' He whistled, and the steeds, breaking through the linden branches, soared up and pierced the low black cloud. Smoke poured at once from the basement window.

From below came the weak, pitiful cry of the cook:

'We're on fire...'

The steeds were already racing over the rooftops of Moscow.

The whole atmosphere is charged….things are moving so fast, the readers too hold their breath to see what happens next….

Master wanted to take leave of Ivan and so they come to the Stravinsy’s clinic:

'I want to bid farewell to the city,' the master cried to Azazello, who rode at their head.

Thunder ate up the end of the master's phrase. Azazello nodded and sent his horse into a gallop.

The dark cloud flew precipitously to meet the fliers, but as yet gave not a sprinkle of rain.

They flew over the boulevards, they saw little figures of people scatter, running for shelter from the rain. The first drops were falling. They flew over smoke - all that remained of Griboedov House. They flew over the city which was already being flooded by darkness. Over them lightning flashed. Soon the roofs gave place to greenery. Only then did the rain pour down, transforming the fliers into three huge bubbles in the water.

Margarita was already familiar with the sensation of flight, but the master was not, and he marvelled at how quickly they reached their goal, the one to whom he wished to bid farewell, because he had no one else to bid farewell to. He immediately recognized through the veil of rain the building of Stravinsky's clinic, the river, and the pine woods on the other bank, which he had studied so well. They came down in the clearing of a copse not far from the clinic.

'I'll wait for you here,' cried Azazello, his hands to his mouth, now lit up by lightning, now disappearing behind the grey veil. 'Say your farewells, but be quick!'

The master and Margarita jumped from their saddles and flew, flickering like watery shadows, through the clinic garden. A moment later the master, with an accustomed hand, was pushing aside the balcony grille of room no.117. Margarita followed after him. They stepped into Ivanushka's room, unseen and unnoticed in the rumbling and howling of the storm. The master stopped by the bed. Ivanushka lay motionless, as before, when for the first time he had watched a storm in the house of his repose. But he was not weeping as he had been then. Once he had taken a good look at the dark silhouette that burst into his room from the balcony, he raised himself, held out his hands, and said joyfully:

'Ah, it's you! And I kept waiting and waiting for you! And here you are, my neighbour!'

To this the master replied:

'I'm here, but unfortunately I cannot be your neighbour any longer. I'm flying away forever, and I've come to you only to say farewell.'

'I knew that, I guessed it,' Ivan replied quietly and asked: 'You met him?'

'Yes,' said the master. 'I've come to say farewell to you, because you are the only person I've talked with lately.'

Ivanushka brightened up and said:

`It's good that you stopped off here. I'll keep my word, I won't write any more poems. I'm interested in something else now,' Ivanushka smiled and with mad eyes looked somewhere past the master. 'I want to write something else. You know, while I lay here, a lot became clear to me.'

The master was excited by these words and, sitting on the edge of Ivanushka's bed, said:

'Ah, but that's good, that's good. You'll write a sequel about him.'

Ivanushka's eyes lit up.

'But won't you do that yourself?' Here he hung his head and added pensively: 'Ah, yes ... what am I asking?' Ivanushka looked sidelong at the floor, his eyes fearful.

'Yes,' said the master, and his voice seemed unfamiliar and hollow to Ivanushka, `I won't write about him any more now. I'll be occupied with other things.'

A distant whistle cut through the noise of the storm.

'Do you hear?' asked the master.

'The noise of the storm ...'

'No, I'm being called, it's time for me to go,' explained the master, and he got up from the bed.

"Wait! One word more,' begged Ivan. "Did you find her? Did she remain faithful to you?'

`Here she is,' the master replied and pointed to the wall. The dark Margarita separated from the white wall and came up to the bed. She looked at the young man lying there and sorrow could be read in her eyes.

'Poor boy, poor boy ...' Margarita whispered soundlessly and bent down to the bed.

'She's so beautiful,' Ivan said, without envy, but sadly, and with a certain quiet tenderness.

'Look how well everything has turned out for you. But not so for me.' Here he thought a little and added thoughtfully:

'Or else maybe it is so...'

'It is so, it is so,' whispered Margarita, and she bent closer to him.

'I'm going to kiss you now, and everything will be as it should be with you ... believe me in that, I've seen everything, I know everything ...' The young man put his arms around her neck and she kissed him.

'Farewell, disciple,' the master said barely audibly and began melting into air. He disappeared, and Margarita disappeared with him. The balcony grille was closed.

Ivanushka fell into anxiety. He sat up in bed, looked around uneasily, even moaned, began talking to himself, got up. The storm raged more and more, and evidently stirred up his soul. He was also upset by the troubling footsteps and muted voices that his ear, accustomed to the constant silence, heard outside the door. He called out, now nervous and trembling:

'Praskovya Fyodorovna!'

Praskovya Fyodorovna was already coming into the room, looking at Ivanushka questioningly and uneasily.

'What? What is it?' she asked. The storm upsets you? Never mind, never mind ... we'll help you now ... I'll call the doctor now ...'

'No, Praskovya Fyodorovna, you needn't call the doctor,' said Ivanushka, looking anxiously not at Praskovya Fyodorovna but into the wall.

'There's nothing especially the matter with me. I can sort things out now, don't worry. But you'd better tell me,' Ivan begged soulfully, 'what just happened in room one-eighteen?'

'Eighteen?' Praskovya Fyodorovna repeated, and her eyes became furtive.

'Why, nothing happened there.' But her voice was false; Ivanushka noticed it at once and said:

'Eh, Praskovya Fyodorovna! You're such a truthful person... You think I'll get violent? No, Praskovya Fyodorovna, that won't happen. You'd better speak directly, for I can feel everything through the wall.'

'Your neighbour has just passed away,' whispered Praskovya Fyodorovna, unable to overcome her truthfulness and kindness, and, all clothed in a flash of lightning, she looked fearfully at Ivanushka. But nothing terrible happened to Ivanushka. He only raised his finger significantly and said:

'I knew it! I assure you, Praskovya Fyodorovna, that yet another person has just passed away in the city. I even know who,' here Ivanushka smiled mysteriously. 'It's a woman!'