‘It won’t fly out.’
And just then a nasal voice came through the window:
‘Peace be unto you.’1
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 comer 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!’
‘I like quickness myself,’ Margarita said excitedly, ‘I like quickness and nakedness … Like from a Mauser — bang! Ah, how he shoots!’ Margarita cried, turning to the master. ‘A seven under the pillow — any pip you like! …’ Margarita was getting drunk, and it made her eyes blaze.
‘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. Falemian 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 comer 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.
