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 noseless killer of Gestas, nor the cruel fifth procurator of Judea, the equestrian Pontius Pilate.
1928-1940
The End
Notes
Epigraph
1 The epigraph comes from the scene entitled ‘Faust’s Study’ in the first part of the drama Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1842). The question is asked by Faust; the answer comes from the demon Mephistopheles.
Book One
Chapter I: Never Talk with Strangers
1 the Patriarch’s Ponds: Bulgakov uses the old name for what in 1918 was rechristened ‘Pioneer Ponds’. Originally these were three ponds, only one of which remains, on the place where Philaret, eighteenth-century patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, had his residence.
2 Berlioz: Bulgakov names several of his characters after composers. In addition to Berlioz, there will be the financial director Rimsky and the psychiatrist Stravinsky. The efforts of critics to find some meaning behind this fact seem rather strained.
3 Massolit: An invented but plausible contraction parodying the many contractions introduced in post-revolutionary Russia. There will be others further on – Dramlit House (House for Dramatists and Literary Workers), findirector (financial director), and so on.
4 . Homeless: In early versions of the novel, Bulgakov called his poet Bezrodny (‘Pastless’ or ’Familyless‘). Many ’proletarian’ writers adopted such pen-names, the most famous being Alexei Peshkov, who called himself Maxim Gorky (gorky meaning ‘bitter’). Others called themselves Golodny (‘Hungry’), Besposhchadny (‘Merciless’), Pribludny (‘Stray’). Worthy of special note here is the poet Efim Pridvorov, who called himself Demian Bedny (‘Poor’), author of violent anti-religious poems. It may have been the reading of Bedny that originally sparked Bulgakov’s impulse to write The Master and Margarita. In his Journal of 1925 (the so-called ‘Confiscated Journal’ which turned up in the files of the KGB and was published in 1990), Bulgakov noted: ’Jesus Christ is presented as a scoundrel and swindler … There is no name for this crime.‘
5 Kislovodsk: Literally ’acid waters‘, a popular resort in the northern Caucasus, famous for its mineral springs.
6 Philo of Alexandria: (20 BC-AD 54), Greek philosopher of Jewish origin, a biblical exegete and theologian, influenced both the Neo-Platonists and early Christian thinkers.
7 Flavius Josephus: (AD 37-100), Jewish general and historian, born in Jerusalem, the author of The Jewish War and Antiquities of the Jews. Incidentally, Berlioz is mistaken: Christ is mentioned in the latter work.
8 Tacitus’s [famous] Annals: A work, covering the years AD 14-66, by Roman historian Cornelius Tacitus (AD 55-120). He also wrote a History of the years AD 69-70, among other works. Modem scholarship rejects the opinion that the passage Berlioz refers to here is a later interpolation.
9 Osiris: Ancient Egyptian protector of the dead, brother and husband of Isis, and father of the hawk-headed Horus, a ’corn god‘, annually killed and resurrected.
10 Tammuz: A Syro-Phoenician demi-god, like Osiris a spirit of annual vegetation.
11 Marduk: Babylonian sun-god, leader of a revolt against the old deities and institutor of a new order.
12 Vitzliputzli: Also known as Huitzilopochtli, the Aztec god of war, to whom human sacrifices were offered.
13 a poodle’s head:
