‘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.
‘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 for ever, 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!’
Chapter 31, On Sparrow Hills1
The storm was swept away without a trace, and a multicoloured rainbow, its arch thrown across all of Moscow, stood in the sky, drinking water from the Moscow River. High up, on a hill between two copses, three dark silhouettes could be seen. Woland, Koroviev and Behemoth sat in the saddle on three black horses, looking at the city spread out beyond the river, with the fragmented sun glittering in thousands of windows facing west, and at the gingerbread towers of the Devichy Convent.2
There was a noise in the air, and Azazello, who had the master and Margarita flying in the black tail of his cloak, alighted with them beside the waiting group.
‘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 way to a sweetish anxiety, a wondering gypsy excitement.
‘For ever! … 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, meagre grass under his feet.
The silence was broken by the bored Behemoth.
‘Allow me, maitre,’ he began,
