1 Yes,' the stranger went on, ' it's an odd sort of funeral. They're

1 Yes,' the stranger went on, ' it's an odd sort of funeral. They're carrying the man off to the cemetery in the usual way but all they can think about is--what's happened to his head? '

Preoccupied though she was, Margarita Nikolayevna could not help being

intrigued by this stranger's extraordinary conversation.

Margarita asked no more questions but stared hard at Latunsky.

Meanwhile the procession had moved on again, the mourners being followed by a number of mostly empty cars.

Astounded, Margarita said:

Instead of replying the man took off his bowler hat and held it in his outstretched hand.

Margarita paled and edged away. ' Why didn't you say so at once,' she said, ' instead of making up that fairy tale about a stolen head? Have you come to arrest me? '

The stranger glanced round and said mysteriously :

Margarita blazed with anger.

Immediately she heard the stranger's voice behind her:

White in the face, Margarita turned back to the bench. The man sat frowning at her.

Margarita obediently did as she was told, but once seated could not help asking again :

the street and invites her ... I have no prejudices, I assure you.' Margarita laughed mirthlessly. ' But I never meet foreigners and I have never wanted to ... besides that, my husband ... my tragedy is that I live with a man I don't love . . . but I can't bring myself to ruin his life ... he has never shown me anything but kindness . . .'

Azazello listened to this incoherent confession and said severely:

Margarita obediently stopped talking.

To this Azazello snorted and replied:

Azazello leaned towards her and whispered meaningly :

Azazello nodded silently.

W^ith a bitter smile Margarita said :

Margarita said nothing for a moment, then replied :

Margarita gripped the box tighter and went on:

Margarita turned in the direction that he was pointing, but saw nothing in particular. Then she turned to Azazello for some explanation of his absurd cry of ' Bah! ', but there was no one to explain : Margarita Nikolayevna's mysterious companion had vanished.

Margarita felt in her handbag and made sure that the gold box was still where she had put it. Then without stopping to reflect she hurried away from the Alexander Gardens.

20. Azazello's Cream

Through the branches of the maple tree a full moon hung in the clear evening sky. The limes and acacias traced a complex pattern of shadows on the grass. A triple casement window in the attic, open but with the blind drawn, shone with a glare of electric light. Every lamp was burning in Margarita Nikolayevna's bedroom and lighting up the chaotically untidy room.

On the bedspread lay blouses, stockings and underwear, more crumpled underwear was piled on the floor beside a packet of cigarettes that had been squashed in the excitement. A pair of slippers was on the bedside table alongside a cold, unfinished cup of coffee and an ashtray with a smouldering cigarette end. A black silk dress hung across the chairback. The room smelled of perfume and from somewhere there came the reek of a hot iron.

Margarita Nikolayevna was sitting in front of a full-length mirror in nothing but black velvet slippers, a bath-wrap thrown over her naked body. Her gold wrist-watch lay in front of her alongside the little box given her by Azazello, and Margarita was staring at the watch-face.

At times she felt that the watch had broken and the hands were not moving. They were moving, but so slowly that they seemed to have stuck. At last the minute hand pointed to twenty nine minutes past eight. Margarita's heart was thumping so violently that at first she could hardly pick up the box. With an effort she opened it and saw that it contained a greasy yellowish cream. It seemed to smell of swamp mud. With the tip of her finger Margarita put a little blob of the cream on her palm, which produced an even stronger smell of marsh and forest, and then she began to massage the cream into her forehead and cheeks.

The ointment rubbed in easily and produced an immediate tingling effect. After several rubs Margarita looked into the mirror and dropped the box right on to the watch-glass, which shivered into a web of fine cracks. Margarita shut her eyes, then looked again and burst into hoots of laughter.

Her eyebrows that she had so carefully plucked into a fine line had thickened into two regular arcs above her eyes, which had taken on a deeper green colour. The fine vertical furrow between her eyebrows which had first appeared in October when the master disappeared, had vanished without trace. Gone too were the yellowish shadows at her temples and two barely detectable sets of crowsfeet round the corners of her eyes. The skin of her cheeks was evenly suffused with pink, her brow had become white and smooth and the frizzy, artificial wave in her hair had straightened out.

A dark, naturally curly-haired woman of twenty, teeth bared and laughing uncontrollably, was looking out of the mirror at the thirty-year-old Margarita.

Laughing, Margarita jumped out of her bath-wrap with one leap, scooped out two large handfuls of the slightly fatty cream and began rubbing it

vigorously all over her body. She immediately glowed and turned a healthy pink. In a moment her headache stopped, after having pained her all day since the encounter in the Alexander Gardens. The muscles of her arms and legs grew firmer and she even lost weight.

She jumped and stayed suspended in the air just above the carpet, then slowly and gently dropped back to the ground.

The anointing had not only changed her appearance. Joy surged through every part of her body, she felt as though bubbles were shooting along every limb. Margarita felt free, free of everything, realising with absolute clarity that what was happening was the fulfilment of her presentiment of that morning, that she was going to leave her house and her past life for ever. But one thought from her past life hammered persistently in her mind and she knew that she had one last duty to perform before she took off into the unknown, into the air. Naked as she was she ran out of the bedroom, flying through the air, and into her husband's study, where she turned on the light and flew to his desk. She tore a sheet off his note-pad and in one sweep, erasing nothing and changing nothing, she quickly and firmly pencilled this message :Forgive me and forget me as quickly as you can. I am leaving you for ever. Don't look for me, it will be useless. Misery and unhappiness have turned me into a witch. It is time for me to go. Farewell. Margarita.

With a sense of absolute relief Margarita flew back into the bedroom. Just then Natasha came in, loaded with clothes and shoes. At once the whole pile, dresses on coathangers, lace blouses, blue silk shoes on shoe trees, belts, all fell on to the floor and Natasha clasped her hands.

Dumbfounded, Natasha gazed at Margarita for a while then clasped her

round the neck, kissing her and shouting :

Natasha rummaged in the heap for whatever she could pick up--stockings, shoes, dresses and underwear--and ran out of the bedroom.

At that moment from an open window on the other side of the street came the loud strains of a waltz and the spluttering of a car engine as it drew up at the gate.

The car's engine roared as it accelerated away. The gate slammed and footsteps could be heard on the flagged path.

Margarita flung the shutters open and sat sideways on the windowsill, clasping her knees with her hands. The moonlight caressed her right side. Margarita raised her head towards the moon and put on a reflective and poetic face. Two more footsteps were heard and then they suddenly stopped. With another admiring glance at the moon and a sigh for fun, Margarita turned to look down at the garden, where she saw her neighbour of the floor below, Nikolai Ivanovich. He was clearly visible in the moonlight, sitting on a bench on which he had obviously just sat down with a bump. His pince-nez was lop-sided and he was clutching his briefcase in his arms.

Nikolai Ivanovich said nothing.

Margarita Nikolayevna ran her left hand along her temple, arranging a lock of hair, then said crossly :

Nikolai Ivanovich, visible in the bright moonlight down to the last button on his grey waistcoat and the last hair on his little pointed beard, suddenly gave an idiotic grin and got up from his bench. Obviously half-crazed with embarrassment, instead of taking off his hat he waved his briefcase and flexed his knees as though just about to break into a Russian dance.

You can all go to hell!'

Just then the telephone rang in Margarita's bedroom. She slipped off the windowsill and forgetting Nikolai Ivanovich completely she snatched up the receiver.

Margarita hung up and at once something wooden in the next room started bumping about and tapping on the door. Margarita flung it open and a broom, bristles upward, danced into the bedroom. Its handle beat a tattoo on the floor, tipped itself up horizontally and pointed towards the window. Margarita whimpered with joy and jumped astride the broomstick. Only then did she remember that in the excitement she had forgotten to get dressed. She galloped over to the bed and picked up the first thing to hand, which was a blue slip. Waving it like a banner she flew out of the window. The waltz rose to a crescendo.

Margarita dived down from the window and saw Nikolai Ivanovich sitting on the bench. He seemed to be frozen to it, listening stunned to the shouts and bangs that had been coming from the top-floor bedroom.

The wretched man groaned, fidgeted and dropped his briefcase.

Margarita turned round for a last look at the house where she had spent so many years of unhappiness and saw the astonished face of Natasha in the lighted window.

21. The Flight

Invisible and free! Reaching the end of her street, Margarita turned sharp right and flew on down a long, crooked street with its plane trees and its patched roadway, its oil-shop with a warped door where they sold kerosene by the jugful and the bottled juice of parasites. Here Margarita discovered that although she was invisible, free as air and thoroughly enjoying herself, she still had to take care. Stopping herself by a miracle she just avoided a lethal collison with an old, crooked lamp-post. As she swerved away from it, Margarita gripped her broomstick harder and flew on more slowly, glancing at the passing signboards and electric cables.

The next street led straight to the Arbat. By now she had thoroughly mastered the business of steering her broom, having found that it answered to the slightest touch of her hands or legs and that when flying around the town she had to be very careful to avoid collisions. It was now quite obvious that the people in the street could not see her. Nobody turned their head, nobody shouted' Look, look! ', nobody stepped aside, nobody screamed, fell in a faint or burst into laughter.

Margarita flew silently and very slowly at about second-storey height. Slow as her progress was, however, she made slightly too wide a sweep as she flew into the blindingly-lit Arbat and hit her shoulder against an illuminated glass traffic sign. This annoyed her. She stopped the obedient broomstick, flew back, aimed for the sign and with a sudden flick of the end of her broom, smashed it to fragments. The pieces crashed to the ground, passers-by jumped aside, a whistle blew and Margarita burst into laughter at her little act of wanton destruction.

She crossed the Arbat, climbed to fourth-floor height, past the brilliant neon tubes of a corner theatre and turned into a narrow side-street flanked with tall houses. All their windows were open and radio music poured out from all sides. Out of curiosity Margarita glanced into one of them. She saw a kitchen. Two Primuses were roaring away on a marble ledge, attended by two women standing with spoons in their hands and swearing at each other.

The two quarrelling women stopped at the sound of her voice and stood petrified, clutching their dirty spoons. Margarita carefully stretched out her arm between them and turned off both primuses. The women gasped. But Margarita was already bored with this prank and had flown out again into the street.

Her attention was caught by a massive and obviously newly-built eight-storey block of flats at the far end of the street. Margarita flew towards it and as she landed she saw that the building was faced with black marble, that its doors were wide, that a porter in gold-laced peaked cap and buttons stood in the hall. Over the doorway was a gold inscription reading ' Dramlit House'.

Margarita frowned at the inscription, wondering what the word ' Dramlit' could mean. Tucking her broomstick under her arm, Margarita pushed open the front door, to the amazement of the porter, walked in and saw a huge black notice-board that listed the names and flat numbers of all the residents. The inscription over the name-board, reading ' Drama and Literature House,' made Margarita give a suppressed yelp of predatory anticipation. Rising a little in the air, she began eagerly to read the names: Khustov, Dvubratsky, Quant, Beskudnikov, Latunsky . . .

The porter jumped up in astonishment and stared at the name-board, wondering why it had suddenly given a shriek.

Margarita was already flying upstairs, excitedly repeating :

Margarita jumped off her broomstick and the cold stone floor of the landing felt pleasantly cool to her hot bare feet. She rang once, twice. No answer. Margarita pressed the button harder and heard the bell ringing far inside Latunsky's flat. Latunsky should have been grateful to his dying day that the chairman of massolit had fallen under a tramcar and that the memorial gathering was being held that very evening. Latunsky must have been born under a lucky star, because the coincidence saved him from an encounter with Margarita, newly turned witch that Friday.

No one came to open the door. At full speed Margarita flew down, counting the floors as she went, reached the bottom, flew out into the street and looked up. She counted the floors and tried to guess which of the

windows belonged to Latunsky's flat. Without a doubt they were the five unlighted windows on the eighth floor at the corner of the building. Feeling sure that she was right, Margarita flew up and a few seconds later found her way through an open window into a dark room lit only by a silver patch of moonlight. Margarita walked across and fumbled for the switch. Soon all the lights in the flat were burning. Parking her broom in a corner and making sure that nobody was at home, Margarita opened the front door and looked at the nameplate. This was it.

People say that Latunsky still turns pale when he remembers that evening and that he always pronounces Berlioz's name with gratitude. If he had been at home God knows what violence might have been done that night.

Margarita went into the kitchen and came out with a massive hammer.

Naked and invisible, unable to restrain herself, her hands shook with impatience. Margarita took careful aim and hit the keys of the grand piano, sending a crashing discord echoing through the flat. The innocent piano, a Backer baby grand, howled and sobbed. With the sound of a revolver shot, the polished sounding-board split under a hammer-blow. Breathing hard, Margarita smashed and battered the strings until she collapsed into an armchair to rest.

An ominous sound of water came from the kitchen and the bathroom. ' It must be overflowing by now . . .' thought Margarita and added aloud :

A flood was already pouring from the kitchen into the passage. Wading barefoot, Margarita carried buckets of water into the critic's study, and emptied them into the drawers of his desk. Then having smashed the glass-fronted bookcase with a few hammer-blows, she ran into the bedroom. There she shattered the mirror in the wardrobe door, pulled out all Latunsky's suits and flung them into the bathtub. She found a large bottle of ink in the study and poured its contents all over the huge, luxurious double bed.

Although all this destruction was giving her the deepest pleasure, she somehow felt that its total effect was inadequate and too easily repaired. She grew wilder and more indiscriminate. In the room with the piano, she smashed the flower vases and the pots holding rubber plants. With savage delight she rushed into the bedroom with a cook's knife, slashed all the sheets and broke the glass in the photograph frames. Far from feeling tired, she wielded her weapon with such ferocity that the sweat poured in streams down her naked body.

Meanwhile in No. 82, immediately beneath Latunsky's flat, Quant's maid was drinking a cup of tea in the kitchen and wondering vaguely why there was so much noise and running about upstairs. Looking up at the ceiling she suddenly saw it change colour from white to a deathly grey-blue. The patch spread visibly and it began to spout drops of water. The maid sat there for a few minutes, bewildered at this phenomenon, until a regular shower began

raining down from the ceiling and pattering on the floor. She jumped up and put a bowl under the stream, but it was useless as the shower was spreading and was already pouring over the gas stove and the dresser. With a shriek Quant's maid ran out of the flat on to the staircase and started ringing Latunsky's front-door bell.

Margarita flew up a few feet and took a swing at the chandelier. Two lamps broke and glass fragments flew everywhere. The shouts at the keyhole had stopped and there was a tramp of boots on the staircase. Margarita floated out of the window, where she turned and hit the glass a gentle blow with her hammer. It shattered and cascaded in smithereens down the marble facade on to the street below. Margarita flew on to the next window. Far below people were running about on the pavement, and one of the cars standing outside the entrance started up and drove away.

Having dealt with all Latunsky's windows, Margarita floated on towards the next flat. The blows became more frequent, the street resounded with bangs and tinkles. The porter ran out of the front door, looked up, hesitated for a moment in amazement, popped a whistle into his mouth and blew like a maniac. The noise inspired Margarita to even more violent action on the eighth-floor windows and then to drop down a storey and to start work on the seventh.

Bored by his idle job of hanging around the entrance hall, the porter put all his pent-up energy into blowing his whistle, playing a woodwind obbligato in time to Margarita's enthusiastic percussion. In the intervals as she moved from window to window, he drew breath and then blew an ear-splitting blast from distended cheeks at each stroke of Margarita's hammer. Their combined efforts produced the most impressive results. Panic broke out in Dramlit House. The remaining unbroken window-panes were flung open, heads were popped out and instantly withdrawn, whilst open windows were hastily shut. At the lighted windows of the building opposite appeared figures, straining forward to try and see why for no reason all the windows of Dramlit House were spontaneously exploding.

All along the street people began running towards Dramlit House and inside it others were pelting senselessly up and down the staircase. The Quants' maid shouted to them that they were being flooded out and she was soon joined by the Khustovs' maid from No. 80 which lay underneath the Quants'. Water was pouring through the Khustovs' ceiling into the bathroom and the kitchen. Finally an enormous chunk of plaster crashed down from Quants' kitchen ceiling, smashing all the dirty crockery on the draining-board and letting loose a deluge as though someone upstairs were pouring out buckets of dirty rubbish and lumps of sodden plaster. Meanwhile

a chorus of shouts came from the staircase.

Flying past the last window but one on the fourth floor, Margarita glanced into it and saw a panic-stricken man putting on a gas mask. Terrified at the sound of Margarita's hammer tapping on the window, he vanished from the room. Suddenly the uproar stopped. Floating down to the third floor Margarita looked into the far window, which was shaded by a flimsy blind. The room was lit by a little night-light. In a cot with basketwork sides sat a little boy of about four, listening nervously. There were no grownups in the room and they had obviously all run out of the flat.

Nobody answered and he said :

Margarita pushed aside the blind and flew in at the window.

The boy glanced slyly to one side and asked :

Margarita gently put the hammer on the windowsill and flew out of the window. Below, disorder reigned. People were shouting and running up and down the glass-strewn pavement, policemen among them. Suddenly a bell started clanging and round the corner from the Arbat drove a red fire-engine with an extending ladder.

Margarita had already lost interest. Steering her way past any cables, she clutched the broom harder and in a moment was flying high above Dramlit House. The street veered sideways and vanished. Beneath her now was only an expanse of roofs, criss-crossed with brilliantly lit roads. Suddenly it all slipped sideways, the strings of light grew blurred and vanished.

Margarita gave another jerk, at which the sea of roofs disappeared,

replaced below her by a sea of shimmering electric lights. Suddenly the sea of light swung round to the vertical and appeared over Margarita's head whilst the moon shone under her legs. Realising that she had looped the loop, Margarita righted herself, turned round and saw that the sea had vanished ; behind her there was now only a pink glow on the horizon. In a second that too had disappeared and Margarita saw that she was alone with the moon, sailing along above her and to the left. Margarita's hair streamed out behind her in wisps as the moonlight swished past her body. From the two lines of widely-spaced lights meeting at a point in the distance and from the speed with which they were vanishing behind her Margarita guessed that she was flying at prodigious speed and was surprised to discover that it did not take her breath away.

After a few seconds' travel, far below in the earthbound blackness an electric sunrise flared up and rolled beneath Margarita's feet, then twisted round and vanished. Another few seconds, another burst of light.

Two or tliree times she saw beneath her what looked like dull glinting bands of steel ribbon that were rivers.

Glancing upward and to the left she stared at the moon as it flew past her, rushing backwards to Moscow, yet strangely appearing to stand still. In the moon she could clearly see a mysterious dark shape--not exactly a dragon, not quite a little hump-backed horse, its sharp muzzle pointed towards the city she was leaving.

The thought then came to Margarita that there was really no reason for her to drive her broom at such a speed. She was missing a unique chance to see the world from a new viewpoint and savour the thrill of flight. Something told her that wherever her destination might be, her hosts would wait for her.

There was no hurry, no reason to make herself dizzy with speed or to fly at such a height, so she tilted the head other broom downwards and floated, at a greatly reduced speed, almost down to ground level. This headlong dive, as though on an aerial toboggan, gave her the utmost pleasure. The earth rose up to her and the moonlit landscape, until then an indistinguishable blur, was revealed in exquisite detail. Margarita flew just above the veil of mist over meadow and pond ; through the wisps of vapour she could hear the croaking of frogs, from the distance came the heart-stopping moan of a train. Soon Margarita caught sight of it. It was moving slowly, like a caterpillar blowing sparks from the top of its head. She overtook it, crossed another lake in which a reflected moon swam beneath her legs, then flew still lower, nearly brushing the tops of the giant pines with her feet.

Suddenly Margarita caught the sound of heavy, snorting breath behind her and it seemed to be slowly catching her up. Gradually another noise like a flying bullet and a woman's raucous laughter could be heard. Margarita

looked round and saw that she was being followed by a dark object of curious shape. As it drew nearer it began to look like someone flying astride, until as it slowed down to draw alongside her Margarita saw clearly that it was Natasha.

Completely naked too, her hair streaming behind her, she was flying along mounted on a fat pig, clutching a briefcase in its front legs and furiously pounding the air with its hind trotters. A pince-nez, which occasionally flashed in the moonlight, had fallen off its nose and was dangling on a ribbon, whilst the pig's hat kept falling forward over its eyes. After a careful look Margarita recognised the pig as Nikolai Ivanovich and her laughter rang out, mingled with Natasha's, over the forest below.

As she flew alongside Margarita, Natasha laughingly told her what had happened in the house after Margarita Nikolayevna had flown away over the gate.

Natasha confessed that without touching any more of the things she had been given she had torn her clothes off, rushed to the cream and started to anoint herself. The same transformation took place. Laughing aloud with delight, she was standing in front of the mirror admiring her magical beauty when the door opened and in walked Nikolai Ivanovich. He was highly excited and was holding Margarita Nikolayevna's slip, his briefcase and his hat. At first he was riveted to the spot with horror, then announced, as red as a lobster, that he thought he should bring the garment back. . . .

As they had romped about in the bedroom, Natasha smeared some of the cream on Nikolai Ivanovich and then it was her turn to freeze with astonishment. The face of her respectable neighbour shrank and grew a snout,

whilst his arms and legs sprouted trotters. Looking at himself in the mirror Nikolai Ivanovich gave a wild, despairing squeal but it was too late. A few seconds later, with Natasha astride him, he was flying through the air away from Moscow, sobbing with chagrin.

Margarita replied :

She dug her heels into the pig's thin flanks, sending it flying forward. In a moment Natasha could only be seen as a dark spot far ahead and as she vanished altogether the swish of her passage through the air died away.

Margarita flew on slowly through the unknown, deserted countryside, over hills strewn with occasional rocks and sparsely grown with giant fir trees. She was no longer flying over their tops, but between their trunks, silvered on one side by the moonlight. Her faint shadow flitted ahead of her, as the moon was now at her back.

Sensing that she was approaching water, Margarita guessed that her goal was near. The fir trees parted and Margarita gently floated through the air towards a chalky hillside. Below it lay a river. A mist was swirling round the bushes growing on the cliff-face, whilst the opposite bank was low and flat. There under a lone clump of trees was the flicker of a camp fire, surrounded by moving figures, and Margarita seemed to hear the insistent beat of music. Beyond, as far as the eye could see, there was not a sign of life.

Margarita bounded down the hillside to the water, which looked tempting after her chase through the air. Throwing aside the broom, she took a run and dived head-first into the water. Her body, as light as air, plunged in and threw up a column of spray almost to the moon. The water was as warm as a bath and as she glided upwards from the bottom Margarita revelled in the freedom of swimming alone in a river at night. There was no one near Margarita in the water, but further away near some bushes by the shore, she could hear splashing and snorting. Someone else was having a bathe.

Margarita swam ashore and ran up the bank. Her body tingled. She felt no fatigue after her long flight and gave a little dance of pure joy on the damp grass. Suddenly she stopped and listened. The snorting was moving closer and from a clump of reeds there emerged a fat man, naked except for a dented top hat perched on the back of his head. He had been plodding his way through sticky mud, which made him seem to be wearing black boots. To judge from his breath and his hiccups he had had a great deal to drink, which was confirmed by a smell of brandy rising from the water around him.

Catching sight of Margarita the fat man stared at her, then cried with a roar of joy:

The fat man grinned with delight as he realised that Margarita had forgiven him and he announced cheerfully that he just happened to be without his trousers at this particular moment because he had absent-mindedly left them on the bank of the river Yenisei where he had been bathing just before flying here, but would go back for them at once. With an effusive volley of farewells he began bowing and walking backwards, until he slipped and fell headlong into the water. Even as he fell, however, his side-whiskered face kept its smile of cheerful devotion. Then Margarita gave a piercing whistle, mounted the obedient broomstick and flew across to the far bank, which lay in the full moonlight beyond the shadow cast by the chalk cliff.

As soon as she touched the wet grass the music from the clump of willows grew louder and the stream of sparks blazed upwards with furious gaiety. Under the willow branches, hung with thick catkins, sat two rows of fat-cheeked frogs, puffed up as if they were made of rubber and playing a march on wooden pipes. Glow-worms hung on the willow twigs in front of the musicians to light their sheets of music whilst a nickering glow from the camp fire played over the frogs' faces.

The march was being played in Margarita's honour as part of a solemn ceremony of welcome. Translucent water-sprites stopped their dance to wave

fronds at her as their cries of welcome floated across the broad water-meadow. Naked witches jumped down from the willows and curtsied to her. A goat-legged creature ran up, kissed her hand and, as he spread out a silken sheet on the grass, enquired if she had enjoyed her bathe and whether she would like to lie down and rest.

As Margarita lay down the goat-legged man brought her a goblet of champagne, which at once warmed her heart. Asking where Natasha was, she was told that Natasha had already bathed. She was already flying back to Moscow on her pig to warn them that Margarita would soon be coming and to help in preparing her attire.

Margarita's short stay in the willow-grove was marked by a curious event: a whistle split the air and a dark body, obviously missing its intended target, sailed through the air and landed in the water. A few moments later Margarita was faced by the same fat man with side whiskers who had so clumsily introduced himself earlier. He had obviously managed to fly back to the Yenisei because although soaking wet from head to foot, he now wore full evening dress. He had been at the brandy again, which had caused him to land in the water, but as before his smile was indestructible and in his bedraggled state he was permitted to kiss Margarita's hand.

All prepared to depart. The water-sprites ended their dance and vanished. The goat-man politely asked how she had arrived at the river and on hearing that she had ridden there on a broom he cried:

A brown open car flew down to the island. Instead of a driver the chauffeur's seat was occupied by a black, long-beaked crow in a check cap and gauntlets. The island emptied as the witches flew away in the moonlight, the fire burned out and the glowing embers turned to grey ash.

The goat-man opened the door for Margarita, who sprawled on the car's wide back seat. The car gave a roar, took off and climbed almost to the moon. The island fell away, the river disappeared and Margarita was on her way to Moscow.

22. By Candlelight

The steady hum of the car as it flew high above the earth lulled Margarita to sleep and the moonlight felt pleasantly warm. Closing her eyes

she let the wind play on her face and thought wistfully of that strange riverbank which she would probably never see again. After so much magic and sorcery that evening she had already guessed who her host was to be, but she felt quite unafraid. The hope that she might regain her happiness made her fearless. In any case she was not given much time to loll in the car and dream about happiness. The crow was a good driver and the car a fast one. When Margarita opened her eyes she no longer saw dark forests beneath her but the shimmering jewels of the lights of Moscow. The bird-chauffeur unscrewed the right-hand front wheel as they flew along, then landed the car at a deserted cemetery in the Dorogomilov district.

Opening the door to allow Margarita and her broom to alight on a gravestone the crow gave the car a push and sent it rolling towards the ravine beyond the far edge of the cemetery. It crashed over the side and was shattered to pieces. The crow saluted politely, mounted the wheel and flew away on it.

At that moment a black cloak appeared from behind a headstone. A wall eye glistened in the moonlight and Margarita recognised Azazello. He gestured to Margarita to mount her broomstick, leaped astride his own long rapier, and they both took off and landed soon afterwards, unnoticed by a soul, near No. 302A, Sadovaya Street.

As the two companions passed under the gateway into the courtyard, Margarita noticed a man in cap and high boots, apparently waiting for somebody. Light as their footsteps were, the lonely man heard them and shifted uneasily, unable to see who it was.

At the entrance to staircase 6 they encountered a second man, astonishingly similar in appearance to the first, and the same performance was repeated. Footsteps . . . the man turned round uneasily and frowned. When the door opened and closed he hurled himself in pursuit of the invisible intruders and peered up the staircase but failed, of course, to see anything. A third man, an exact copy of the other two, was lurking on the third-floor landing. He was smoking a strong cigarette and Margarita coughed as she walked past him. The smoker leaped up from his bench as though stung, stared anxiously around, walked over to the banisters and glanced down. Meanwhile Margarita and her companion had reached flat No. 50.

They did not ring, but Azazello silently opened the door with his key. Margarita's first surprise on walking in was the darkness. It was as dark as a cellar, so that she involuntarily clutched Azazello's cloak from fear of an accident, but soon from high up and far away a lighted lamp flickered and came closer. As they went Azazello took away Margarita's broom and it vanished soundlessly into the darkness.

They then began to mount a broad staircase, so vast that to Margarita it seemed endless. She was surprised that the hallway of an ordinary Moscow flat could hold such an enormous, invisible but undeniably real and apparently unending staircase. They reached a landing and stopped. The light

drew close and Margarita saw the face of the tall man in black holding the lamp. Anybody unlucky enough to have crossed his path in those last few days would have recognised him at once. It was Koroviev, alias Faggot.

His appearance, it is true, had greatly changed. The guttering flame was no longer reflected in a shaky pince-nez long due for the dustbin, but in an equally unsteady monocle. The moustaches on his insolent face were curled and waxed. He appeared black for the simple reason that he was wearing tails and black trousers. Only his shirt front was white.

Magician, choirmaster, wizard, or the devil knows what, Koroviev bowed and with a broad sweep of his lamp invited Margarita to follow him. Azazello vanished.

Despite the feebleness of the light from Koroviev's lamp, Margarita realised that she was in a vast, colonnaded hall, dark and apparently endless. Stopping beside a small couch, Koroviev put his lamp on a pedestal, gestured to Margarita to sit down and then placed himself beside her in an artistic pose, one elbow leaned elegantly on the pedestal.

Margarita liked Koroviev and she found his flow of light-hearted nonsense reassuring.

Koroviev smiled sweetly, wrinkling his nose.

frwo-roomers and thus became the owner, as you will have noticed, of six rooms altogether, though admittedly scattered all over Moscow. He was just about to pull off his last and most brilliant coup by putting an advertisement in the newspaper offering six rooms in various districts of Moscow in exchange for one five-roomed flat on the Zemlyanoi Rampart, when his activities were suddenly and inexplicably curtailed. He may have a room somewhere now, but not, I can assure you, in Moscow. There's a sharp operator for you--and you talk of the fifth dimension! '

Although it was Koroviev and not Margarita who had been talking about the fifth dimension, she could not help laughing at the way he told his story of the ingenious property tycoon. Koroviev went on:

Margarita's heart beat faster and she nodded.

Margarita listened to Koroviev, trying not to miss a word. Her heart felt cold with expectancy, the thought of happiness made her dizzy. ' Firstly, it has become a tradition,' Koroviev went on, ' that the hostess of the ball must be called Margarita and secondly, she must be a native of the place where the ball is held. We, as you know, are always on the move and happen to be in Moscow at present. We have found a hundred and twenty-one Margaritas in Moscow and would you believe it . . .'-- Koroviev slapped his thigh in exasperation--'. . . not one of them was suitable! Then at last, by a lucky chance . . .'

Koroviev grinned expressively, bowing from the waist, and again Margarita's heart contracted.

They passed a row of columns and finally emerged into another hall which for some reason smelled strongly of lemons. A rustling noise was heard and something landed on Margarita's head. She gave a start.

will be extravagantly luxurious, I warn you. We shall see people who in their time wielded enormous power. But when one recalls how microscopic their influence really was in comparison with the powers of the one in whose retinue I have the honour to serve they become quite laughable, even pathetic . . . You too, of course, are of royal blood.'

Koroviev blew out his lamp, it vanished from his hand and Margarita noticed a patch of light on the floor in front of a black doorway. Koroviev knocked gently. Margarita grew so excited that her teeth started chattering and a shiver ran up her spine.

The door opened into a small room. Margarita saw a wide oak bed covered in dirty, rumpled bedclothes and pillows. In front of the bed was a table with carved oaken legs bearing a candelabra whose sockets were made in the shape of birds' claws. Seven fat wax candles burned in their grasp. On the table there was also a large chessboard set with elaborately carved pieces. A low bench stood on the small, worn carpet. There was one more table laden with golden beakers and another candelabra with arms fashioned like snakes. The room smelled of damp and tar. Shadows thrown by the candlelight criss-crossed on the floor.

Among the people in the room Margarita at once recognised Azazello, now also wearing tails and standing near the bed-head. Now that Azazello was smartly dressed he no longer looked like the ruffian who had appeared to Margarita in the Alexander Gardens and he gave her a most gallant bow.

The naked witch, Hella, who had so upset the respectable barman from the Variety Theatre and who luckily for Rimsky had been driven away at cock-crow, was sitting on the floor by the bed and stirring some concoction in a saucepan which gave off a sulphurous vapour. Besides these, there was an enormous black cat sitting on a stool in front of the chessboard and holding a knight in its right paw.

Hella stood up and bowed to Margarita. The cat jumped down from its stool and did likewise, but making a flourish it dropped the knight and had to crawl under the bed after it.

Faint with terror, Margarita blinked at this candlelit pantomime. Her glance was drawn to the bed, on which sat the man whom the wretched Ivan had recently assured at Patriarch's Ponds that he did not exist.

Two eyes bored into Margarita's face. In the depths of the right eye was a golden spark that could pierce any soul to its core; the left eye was as empty and black as a small black diamond, as the mouth of a bottomless well of dark and shadow. Woland's face was tilted to one side, the right-hand corner of his mouth pulled downward and deep furrows marked his forehead parallel to his eyebrows. The skin of his face seemed burned by timeless sunshine.

Woland was lying sprawled on the bed, dressed only in a long, dirty black nightshirt, patched on the left shoulder. One bare leg was tucked up beneath him, the other stretched out on the bench. Hella was massaging his knees with a steaming ointment.

On Woland's bare, hairless chest Margarita noticed a scarab on a gold chain, intricately carved out of black stone and marked on its back with an arcane script. Near Woland was a strange globe, lit from one side, which seemed almost alive.

The silence lasted for several seconds. ' He is studying me,' thought Margarita and by an effort of will tried to stop her legs from trembling.

At last Woland spoke. He smiled, causing his one sparkling eye to flash.

Woland's voice was so low-pitched that on certain syllables it faded off into' a mere growl.

Woland picked up a long sword from the bed, bent over, poked it under the bed and said :

Azazello gave a slight croak of approval and Woland, staring intently at Margarita, murmured to himself:

He stretched out his arm and beckoned Margarita.

She walked up to him, feeling no ground under her bare feet. Woland placed his hand--as heavy as stone and as hot as fire--on Margarita's shoulder, pulled her towards him and sat her down on the bed by his side.

than I expected, we shan't stand on ceremony.' He leaned over the edge of the bed again and shouted : ' How much longer is this performance under the bed going to last? Come on out! '

The cat, covered in dust and standing on its hind legs, bowed to Margarita. Round its neck it was now wearing a made-up white bow tie on an elastic band, with a pair of ladies' mother-of-pearl binoculars hanging on a cord. It had also gilded its whiskers.

Outraged, the cat had so inflated itself that it looked about to explode at any second.

Aristotle himself.

is my maid, Hella. She's prompt, clever, and there's no service she cannot perform for you.'

The beautiful Hella turned her green eyes on Margarita and smiled, continuing to scoop out the ointment in the palm of her hand and to rub it on Woland's knee.

Margarita was fascinated by the game and amazed to see that the chessmen were alive.

Dropping its lorgnette, the cat gently nudged his king in the back, at which the wretched king covered his face in despair.

His method of analysis took the peculiar form of pulling faces and winking at his king.

From far away came the sound of innumerable wings. Koroviev and Azazello rushed out of the room.

Koroviev and Azazello returned.

Woland gave her a searching stare and moved his knee towards her.

The ointment, hot as lava, burned her hands but without flinching Margarita massaged it into Woland's knee, trying not to cause him pain.

Margarita leaned towards the globe and saw that the little square of land was growing bigger, emerging in natural colours and turning into a kind of relief map. Then she saw a river and a village beside it. A house the size of a pea grew until it was as large as a matchbox. Suddenly and noiselessly its roof flew upwards in a puff of black smoke, the walls collapsed leaving nothing of the two-storey matchbox except a few smoking heaps of rubble. Looking even closer Margarita discerned a tiny female figure lying on the ground and beside her in a pool of blood a baby with outstretched arms.

Abadonna stood motionless.

beautiful girl who is whining and begging to be allowed to stay with her mistress, and with her there is, if you'll forgive me, her pig.'

As Margarita got up from the carpet Koroviev appeared in the doorway.

23. Satan's Rout

Midnight was approaching, time to hurry. Peering into the dim surroundings, Margarita discerned some candles and an empty pool carved out of onyx. As Margarita stood in the pool Hella, assisted by Natasha, poured a thick, hot red liquid all over her. Margarita tasted salt on her lips and realised that she was being washed in blood. The bath of blood was followed by another liquid--dense, translucent and pink, and Margarita's head swam with attar of roses. Next she was laid on a crystal couch and rubbed with large green leaves until she glowed.

The cat came in and began to help. It squatted on its haunches at Margarita's feet and began polishing her instep like a shoeblack.

Margarita never remembered who it was who stitched her shoes out of pale rose petals or how those shoes fastened themselves of their own accord. A force lifted her up and placed her in front of a mirror: in her hair glittered a diamond crown. Koroviev appeared and hung on Margarita's breast a picture of a black poodle in a heavy oval frame with a massive chain. Queen Margarita found this ornament extremely burdensome, as the chain hurt her neck and the picture pulled her over forwards. However, the respect with which Koroviev and Behemoth now treated her was some recompense for the

discomfort.

Escorted by Koroviev and Behemoth, Margarita stepped out of the bathing hall and into total darkness.

A low wall of white tulips rose up in front of Margarita. Beyond it she saw countless lights in globes, and rows of men in tails and starched white shirts. Margarita saw then where the sound of ball music had been coming from. A roar of brass deafened her and the soaring violins that broke through it poured over her body like blood. The orchestra, all hundred and fifty of them, were playing a polonaise.

Seeing Margarita the tail-coated conductor turned pale, smiled and suddenly raised the whole orchestra to its feet with a wave of his arm. Without a moment's break in the music the orchestra stood and engulfed Margarita in sound. The conductor turned away from the players and gave a low bow. Smiling, Margarita waved to him.

Margarita shouted as she was told, amazed that her voice, full as a

bell, rang out over the noise of the orchestra. The conductor gave a start of pleasure, placed his left hand on his heart and with his right went on waving his white baton at the orchestra.

There were no columns in the next hall, but instead it was flanked by walls of red, pink, and milky-white roses on one side and on the other by banks of Japanese double camellias. Fountains played between the walls of flowers and champagne bubbled in three ornamental basins, the first of which was a translucent violet in colour, the second ruby, the third crystal. Negroes in scarlet turbans were busy with silver scoops filling shallow goblets with champagne from the basins. In a gap in the wall of roses was a man bouncing up and down on a stage in a red swallow-tail coat, conducting an unbearably loud jazz band. As soon as he saw Margarita he bent down in front of her until his hands touched the floor, then straightened up and said in a piercing yell:

He slapped himself once on one knee, then twice on the other, snatched a cymbal from the hands of a nearby musician and struck it against a pillar.

As she floated away Margarita caught a glimpse of the virtuoso bandleader, struggling against the polonaise that she could still hear behind her, hitting the bandsmen on the head with his cymbal while they crouched in comic terror.

At last they regained the platform where Koroviev had first met Margarita with the lamp. Now her eyes were blinded with the light streaming from innumerable bunches of crystal grapes. Margarita stopped and a little amethyst pillar appeared under her left hand.

A black-skinned boy put a cushion embroidered with a golden poodle under Margarita's feet. Obeying the pressure of an invisible hand she bent her knee and placed her right foot on the cushion.

Margarita glanced around. Koroviev and Azazello were standing in formal attitudes. Besides Azazello were three young men, who vaguely reminded Margarita of Abadonna. A cold wind blew in her back. Looking round Margarita saw that wine was foaming out of the marble wall into a basin made of ice. She felt something warm and velvety by her left leg. It was Behemoth.

Margarita was standing at the head of a vast carpeted staircase

stretching downwards in front of her. At the bottom, so far away that she seemed to be looking at it through the wrong end of a telescope, she could see a vast hall with an absolutely immense fireplace, into whose cold, black maw one could easily have driven a five-ton lorry. The hall and the staircase, bathed in painfully bright light, were empty. Then Margarita heard the sound of distant trumpets. For some minutes they stood motionless.

Those ten seconds seemed unusually long to Margarita. They had obviously passed but absolutely nothing seemed to be happening. Then there was a crash from below in the enormous fireplace and out of it sprang a gallows with a half-decayed corpse bouncing on its arm. The corpse jerked itself loose from the rope, fell to the ground and stood up as a dark, handsome man in tailcoat and lacquered pumps. A small, rotting coffin then slithered out of the fireplace, its lid flew off and another corpse jumped out. The handsome man stepped gallantly towards it and offered his bent arm. The second corpse turned into a nimble little woman in black slippers and black feathers on her head and then man and woman together hurried up the staircase.

Turning pale and open-mouthed with shock, Margarita looked down and saw gallows and coffin disappear through a side door in the hall.

Just then a headless, armless skeleton appeared in the fireplace below, fell down and turned into yet another man in a tailcoat. Monsieur Jacques'

wife had by now reached the head of the staircase where she knelt down, pale with excitement, and kissed Margarita's foot.

One after another three coffins bounced out o.f the fireplace, splitting and breaking open as they fell, then someone in a black cloak who was immediately stabbed in the back by the next person to come down the chimney. There was a muffled shriek. When an almost totally decomposed corpse emerged from the fireplace, Margarita frowned and a hand, which seemed to be Natasha's, offered her a flacon of sal volatile.

The staircase began to fill up. Now on almost every step there were men in tailcoats accompanied by naked women who only differed in the colour of their shoes and the feathers on their heads.

Margarita noticed a woman with the downcast gaze of a nun hobbling towards her, thin, shy, hampered by a stsrange wooden boot on her left leg and a broad green kerchief round her neck.

prison. The thing on her leg, your majesty, is a Spanish boot and she wears a scarf because when her jailers found out that about five hundred ill-matched husbands had been dispatched from Naples and Palermo for ever, they strangled Signora Toffana in a rage.'

People were now mounting the staircase in a flood. Margarita ceased to notice the arrivals in the hall. Mechanically she raised and lowered her hand, bared her teeth in a smile for each new guest. The landing behind her was buzzing with voices, and music like the waves of the sea floated out from the ball-rooms.

Among the approaching crowd Margarita's glance picked out the woman at whom Koroviev was pointing. She was young, about twenty, with a remarkably beautiful figure but a look of nagging reproach.

Without ceasing to smile and to shake hands with her right hand, she dug the sharp nails of her left hand into Behemoth's ear and whispered to the cat:

Behemoth gave a distinctly unfestive squeak and croaked:

with a swollen ear? I was speaking from the legal point of view ... I'll be quiet, I promise, pretend I'm not a cat, pretend I'm a fish if you like but please let go of my ear!'

Margarita released his ear.

The woman's grim, importunate eyes looked into Margarita's :

Frieda stretched out both her arms to Margarita, but Koroviev and Behemoth deftly took an arm each and whisked her off into the crowd.

By now people were advancing from below like a phalanx bent on assaulting the landing where Margarita stood. The naked women mounting the staircase between the tail-coated and white-tied men floated up in a spectrum of coloured bodies that ranged from white through olive, copper and coffee to quite black. In hair that was red, black, chestnut or flaxen, sparks flashed from precious stones. Diamond-studded orders glittered on the jackets and shirt-fronts of the men. Incessantly Margarita felt the touch of lips to her knee, incessantly she offered her hand to be kissed, her face stretched into a rigid mask of welcome.

they all knew, your majesty,' replied Koroviev. ' Charmed! . . . That young man over there was a dreamer and an eccentric from childhood. A girl fell in love with him and he sold her to a brothel-keeper . . .

On and on poured the stream from below. Its source--the huge fireplace--showed no sign of drying up. An hour passed, then another. Margarita felt her chain weighing more and more. Something odd was happening to her hand : she found she could not lift it without wincing. Koroviev's remarks ceased to interest her. She could no longer distinguish between slant-eyed Mongol faces, white faces and black faces. They all merged into a blur and the air between them seemed to be quivering. A sudden sharp pain like a needle stabbed at Margarita's right hand, and clenching her teeth she leaned her elbow on the little pedestal. A sound like the rustling of wings came from the rooms behind her as the horde of guests danced, and Margarita could feel the massive floors of marble, crystal and mosaic pulsating rhythmically.

Margarita showed as little interest in the emperor Caius Caligula and Messalina as she did in the rest of the procession of kings, dukes, knights, suicides, poisoners, gallows-birds, procuresses, jailers, card-sharpers, hangmen, informers, traitors, madmen, detectives and seducers. Her head swam with their names, their faces merged into a great blur and only one face remained fixed in her memory--Malyuta Skuratov with his fiery beard. Margarita's legs were buckling and she was afraid that she n^ight burst into tears at any moment. The worst pain came from her right knee, which all the guests had kissed. It was swollen, the skin on it had turned blue in spite of Natasha's constant attention to it with a sponge soaked in fragrant ointment. By the end of the third hour Margarita glanced wearily down and saw with a start of joy that the flood of guests was thinning out.

The last two guests mounted the staircase.

The staircase was empty, and although the reception committee waited a little longer to make sure, no one else appeared from the fireplace.

A second later, half-fainting, Margarita found herself beside the pool again where, bursting into tears from the pain in her arm and leg, she collapsed to the floo:r. Hella and Natasha comforted her, doused her in blood and massaged her body until she revived again.

Again Margarita floated away from the pool. In place of Johan Strauss' orchestra the stage behind the wall of tulips had been taken over by a jazz band of frenetic apes. An enormous gorilla with shaggy sideburns and holding a trumpet was leaping clumsily up and down as he conducted. Orang-utan trumpeters sat in the front row, each with a chimpanzee accordionist on his shoulders. Two baboons with manes like lions' were playing the piano, their efforts completely drowned by the roaring, squeaking and banging of the saxophones, violins and drums played by troops of gibbons, mandrils and marmosets. Innumerable couples circled round the glass floor with amazing dexterity, a mass of bodies moving lightly and gracefully as one. Live butterflies fluttered over the dancing horde, flowers drifted down from the ceiling. The electric light had been turned out, the capitals of the pillars were now lit by myriads of glow-worms, and will-o'-the-wisps danced through the air.

Then Margarita found herself by the side of another pool, this time of vast dimensions and ringed by a colonnade. A gigantic black Neptune was pouring a broad pink stream from his great mouth. Intoxicating fumes of champagne rose from the pool. Joy reigned untrammelled. Women, laughing, handed their bags to their escorts or to the Negroes who ran along the sides holding towels, and dived shrieking into the pool. Spray rose in showers. The crystal bottom of the pool glowed with a faint light which shone through the sparkling wine to light up the silvery bodies of the swimmers, who climbed out of the pool again completely drunk. Laughter rang out beneath the pillars until it drowned even the jazz ba.nd.

In all this debauch Margarita distinctly saw one totally drunken woman's face with eyes that were wild with intoxication yet still imploring--Frieda.

Margarita's head began to spin with the fumes of the wine and she was just about to move on when the cat staged one of his tricks in the swimming pool. Behemoth made a few magic passes in front of Neptune's moiath ; immediately all the champagne drained out of the pool, an-d Neptune began spewing forth a stream of brown liquid. Shrieking with delight the women screamed : ' Brandy! ' In a few seconds the pool was full. Spinning round three times like a top the cat leaped into the air and dived into the turbulent sea of brandy. It crawled out, spluttering, its tie soaked, the

gilding gone from its whiskers, and minus its lorgnette. Only one woman dared follow Behemoth's example --the dressmaker--procuress and her escort, a handsome young mulatto. They both dived into the brandy, but before she had time to see any more Margarita was led away by Koroviev.

They seemed to take wing and in their flight Margarita first saw great stone tanks full of oysters, then a row of hellish furnaces blazing away beneath the glass floor and attended by a frantic crew of diabolical chefs. In the confusion she remembered a glimpse of dark caverns lit by candles where girls were serving meat that sizzled on glowing coals and revellers drank Margarita's health from vast mugs of beer. Then came polar bears playing accordions and dancing a Russian dance on a stage, a salamander doing conjuring tricks unharmed by the flames around it ... And for a second time Margarita felt her strength beginning to flag.

Escorted by Koroviev, Margarita returned to the ballroom, but now the dance had stopped and the guests were crowded between the pillars, leaving an open space in the middle of the room. Margarita could not remember who helped her up to a platform which appeared in the empty space. When she had mounted it, to her amazement she heard a bell strike midnight, although by her reckoning midnight was long past. At the last chime of the invisible clock silence fell on the crowd of guests.

Then Margarita saw Woland. He approached surrounded by Abadonna, Azazello and several young men in black resembling Abadonna. She now noticed another platform beside her own, prepared for Woland. But he did not make use of it. Margarita was particularly surprised to notice that Woland appeared at the ball in exactly the same state in which he had been in the bedroom. The same dirty, patched nightshirt hung from his shoulders and his feet were in darned bedroom slippers. Woland was armed with his sword but he leaned on the naked weapon as though it were a walking stick.

Limping, Woland stopped beside his platform. At once Azazello appeared in front of him bearing a dish. On that dish Margarita saw the severed head of a man with most of its front teeth missing. There was still absolute silence, only broken by the distant sound, puzzling in the circumstances, of a door-bell ringing.

and he ceases to exist. I am glad to be able to tell you in front of all my guests-- despite the fact that their presence here is proof to the contrary --that your theory is intelligent and sound. Now--one theory deserves another. Among them there is one which maintains that a man will receive his deserts in accordance with his beliefs. So be it! You shall depart into the void and from the goblet into which your skull is about to be transformed I shall have the pleasure of drinking to life eternal! '

Woland raised his sword. Immediately the skin of the head darkened and shrank, then fell away in shreds, the eyes disappeared and in a second Margarita saw on the dish a yellowed skull, with emerald eyes and pearl teeth, mounted on a golden stand. The top of the skull opened with a hinge.

A new guest, quite alone, entered the ballroom. Outwardly he was no different from the thousands of other male guests, except in one thing--he was literally staggering with fright. Blotches glowed on his cheeks and his eyes were swivelling with alarm. The guest was stunned. Everything that he saw shocked him, above all the way Woland was dressed.

Yet he was greeted with marked courtesy.

Then Margarita went numb. She recognised this man Maigel. She had noticed him several times in Moscow theatres and restaurants. ' Has he died too? ' Margarita wondered. But the matter was soon explained.

Here Margarita noticed that Azazello handed the dish with the skull to Koroviev.

the aim of spying and eavesdropping as much as you could.'

The Baron turned paler than the pallid Abadonna and then something terrible happened. Abadonna stepped in front of the Baron and for a second took off his spectacles. At that moment there was a flash and a crack from Azazello's hand and the Baron staggered, crimson blood spurting from his chest and drenching his starched shirtfront and waistcoat. Koroviev placed the skull under the pulsating stream of blood and when the goblet was full handed it to Woland. The Baron's lifeless body had meanwhile crumpled to the floor.

An instant metamorphosis took place. The nightshirt and darned slippers vanished. Woland was wearing a black gown with a sword at his hip. He strode over to Margarita, offered her the goblet and said in a commanding voice :

Margarita felt dizzy, but the cup was already at her lips and a voice was whispering in her ears :

Her eyes shut, Margarita took a sip and the sweet juice ran through her veins, her ears rang. She was deafened by cocks crowing, a distant band played a march. The crowd of guests faded--the tailcoated men and the women withered to dust and before her eyes the bodies began to rot, the stench of the tomb filled the air. The columns dissolved, the lights went out, the fountains dried up and vanished with the camellias and the tulips. All that remained was what had been there before : poor Berlioz's drawing-room, with a shaft of light falling through its half-open door. Margarita opened it wide and went in.

24. The Master is Released

Everything in Woland's bedroom was as it had been before the ball. Woland was sitting in his nightshirt on the bed, only this time Hella was not rubbing his knee, and a meal was laid on the table in place of the chessboard. Koroviev and Azazello had removed their tailcoats and were sitting at table, alongside them the cat, who still refused to be parted from his bow-tie even though it was by now reduced to a grubby shred. Tottering, Margarita walked up to the table and leaned on it. Woland

beckoned her, as before, to sit beside him on the bed. ' Well, was it very exhausting? ' enquired Woland. ' Oh no, messire,' replied Margarita in a scarcely audible voice. ' Noblesse oblige,' remarked the cat, pouring out a glassful of clear liquid for Margarita.

Woland silently raised his glass and clinked it with Margarita's. She drank obediently, expecting the spirit to knock her out. It had no ill effect, however. The reviving warmth flowed through her body, she felt a mild shock in the back of her neck, her strength returned as if she had just woken from a long refreshing sleep and she felt ravenously hungry. Remembering that she had not eaten since the morning of the day before, her hunger increased and she began wolfing down caviar.

Behemoth cut himself a slice of pineapple, salted and peppered it, ate it and chased it down with a second glass of spirit with a flourish that earned a round of applause.

After Margarita's second glassful the light in the candelabra burned brighter and the coals in the fireplace glowed hotter, yet she did not feel the least drunk. As her white teeth bit into the meat Margarita savoured the delicious juice that poured from it and watched Behemoth smearing an oyster with mustard.

Azazello, Koroviev and Behemoth looked down in embarrassment and Margarita replied, blushing :

For a moment Margarita did not grasp the implication of this, then she exclaimed in amazement:

Koroviev took the seven of spades out of a box, showed it to Margarita and asked her to point at one of the pips. Margarita chose the one in the upper right-hand corner. Hella hid the card under a pillow and shouted :

Azazello, who was sitting with his back to the pillow, took a black automatic out of his trouser pocket, aimed the muzzle over his shoulder and, without turning round towards the bed, fired, giving Margarita an enjoyable shock. The seven of spades was removed from under the pillow. The upper right-hand pip was shot through.

meet him even without his revolver! I give you my word of honour as an ex-choirmaster that anybody who did would regret it.'

During the trial of marksmanship the cat had sat scowling. Suddenly it announced:

Azazello snorted, but Behemoth was insistent and demanded not one but two revolvers. Azazello drew another pistol from his left hip pocket and with a sarcastic grin handed them both to the cat. Two pips on the card were selected. The cat took a long time to prepare, then turned its back on the cushion. Margarita sat down with her fingers in her ears and stared at the owl dozing on the mantelpiece. Behemoth fired from both revolvers, at which there came a yelp from Hella, the owl fell dead from the mantelpiece and the clock stopped from a bullet in its vitals. Hella, one finger bleeding, sank her nails into the cat's fur. Behemoth in retaliation clawed at her hair and the pair of them rolled on the floor in a struggling heap. A glass fell off the table and broke.

Hella and the cat made friends again and sealed their reconciliation with a kiss. Someone removed the card from under the cushion and examined it. Not a single pip, except the one shot through by Azazello had been touched.

Supper went gaily on. The candles began to gutter, a warm dry heat suffused the room from the fireplace. Having eaten her fill, a feeling of well-being came over Margarita. She watched as Azazello blew smoke-rings at the fireplace and the cat spiked them on the end of his sword. She felt no desire to go, although by her timing it was late--probably, she thought, about six o'clock in the morning. During a pause Margarita turned to Woland and said timidly :

to embarrass her. She got up from the table. In silence Woland picked up his greasy dressing-gown from the bed and Koroviev threw it over Margarita's shoulders.

Margarita felt she was looking at Woland through a veil; her eyes had filled with tears.

Margarita's heart began to knock, she sighed deeply and tried to think of something.

Margarita caught her breath. She was about to utter her secret wish when she suddenly turned pale, opened her mouth and stared. ' Frieda! . . .

Frieda, Frieda! ' a sobbing, imploring voice cried in her ear. ' My name is Frieda! ' and Margarita said, stuttering:

With careful emphasis Woland repeated Margarita's own words : ' one thing '.

Margarita sighed again and said :

The cat looked up at the ceiling and sighed noisily, but said nothing, obviously remembering the damage done to his ear.

its own business. I admit that our scope is fairly wide, in fact it is much wider than a number of very sharp-eyed people imagine . . .'

Azazello squinted at Margarita, gave an imperceptible flick of his red mop and sneered.

had been turning the globe, staring at some detail on it, apparently absorbed in something else while Margarita had been talking. ' Well, as to Frieda . . .' Koroviev prompted her. ' Frieda! ' cried Margarita in a piercing voice. The door burst open and a naked, dishevelled but completely sober woman with ecstatic eyes ran into the room and stretched out her arms towards Margarita, who said majestically :

Frieda gave a shriek and fell spreadeagled, face downward on the floor in front of Margarita. Woland waved his hand and Frieda vanished.

There was silence, broken by Koroviev whispering to Margarita:

A gust of wind burst into the room, flattening the candle flames. The heavy curtain billowed out, the window was flung open. and high above appeared a full moon--not a setting moon, but the midnight moon. A dark green cloth stretched from the wind-ow-sill to the floor and down it walked Ivan's night visitor, the man who called himself the master. He was wearing his hospital clothes--dressing-gown, slippers and the black cap from which he was never parted. His unshaven face twitched in a grimace, he squinted with fear at the candle flames and a flood of moonlight boiled around him.

Margarita recognised him at once, groaned, clasped her hands and ran towards him. She kissed him on the forehead, the lips, pressed her face to his prickly cheek and her long-suppressed tears streamed down her face. She could only say, repeating it like a senseless refrain :

The master pushed her away and said huskily :

grasped the windowsill as though preparing to jump out and

run away again. Staring round at the figures seated in the room

he cried : ' I'm frightened, Margot! I'm getting hallucinations

again . . .'

Stifled with sobbing, Margarita whispered, stammering :

master. He collapsed into it and Margarita fell on her knees at

his side, where she grew calmer. In her excitement she had not

noticed that she was no longer naked and that she was now

wearing a black silk gown. The master's head nodded forward

and he stared gloomily at the floor.

him.' He gave an order to Koroviev :

In a trembling voice Margarita begged the master :

they want to help you! '

The sick man took the glass and drank it, but his hand trembled,

he dropped the glass and it shattered on the floor.

coming to himself already.'

It was true. The patient's stare was less wild and distraught.

When the master had drained the second glass his eyes were

fully alive and conscious. ' That's better,' said Woland with a slight frown. ' Now we can talk. Who are you? '

Margarita could not bear to hear this and burst into tears again. Then she wiped her eyes and cried :

The man laughed and said :

Again the candle flames flickered and jumped and the crockery rattled on the table as Woland gave a laugh like a clap of thunder. Yet no one was frightened or shocked by the laughter; Behemoth even applauded.

The cat jumped down from its chair and wh.ere he had been sitting was a pile of manuscripts. With a bow the cat handed the top copy to Woland. Margarita shuddered and cried out, moved to tears :

She flung herself at Woland's feet and cried ecstatically:

Woland took it, turned it over, put it aside and turned, unsmiling, to stare at the master. Without apparent cause the master had suddenly relapsed into uneasy gloom ; he got up from his chair, wrung his hands and turning towards the distant moon he started to tremble, muttering :

Margarita clutched his hospital dressing-gown, embraced him and moaned tearfully :

A glass winked in the moonlight. It began to work. The master sat down again and his expression grew calmer.

Margarita's eyes shone and she said imploringly to Woland :

Woland nodded and Margarita leaned over the master's ear and whispered something into it. Aloud, he replied :

The master laughed, and clasping Margarita's dishevelled head he said:

Immediately a bewildered man in his underclothes crashed through the ceiling to the floor, with a suitcase in his hand and wearing a cap. Shaking with fear, the man bowed.

The man turned blue and burst into tears of penitence.

The cat gave a hiss of fury and Margarita, with a howl of:

There was a brisk scuffle.

Margot! '

Koroviev pulled Margarita away.

The man turned head over heels and sailed out of the open window of Woland's bedroom.

His eyes starting from his head, the master whispered :

Koroviev threw the case-history into the fire. ' Remove the document--and you remove the man,' said Koroviev with satisfaction.

Margarita : ' I hope you'll be very happy, Margarita Nikolay-evna! ' She nodded towards the master and went on : ' You see, I knew about it all the time.'

Margarita looked enquiringly at Woland, who nodded. Natasha embraced Margarita, kissed her noisily and with a triumphant cry flew out of the window.

Natasha was followed by Nikolai Ivanovich. He had regained human form, but was extremely glum and rather cross.

Before Nikolai Ivanovich knew what was happening, the naked Hella was sitting behind a typewriter and the cat dictating to her.

a rubber stamp, breathed on it in the approved fashion, stamped ' Paid ' on the paper and handed the document to Nikolai Ivanovich. He vanished without trace, to be unexpectedly replaced by another man.

Varenukha hung his head, sighed and said in a low voice :

Overcome with relief, Varenukha beamed and stammered :

Woland's command was obeyed instantly. After a silence he said to the master :

The master smiled.

round the shoulders he added: ' She'll leave me when she comes to her senses.'

Margarita unlinked her arms from the master's and said passionately :

As Margarita had no pocket in her gown she wrapped the horseshoe in a napkin and knotted it. Then something seemed to worry her. She looked out of the window at the moon and said :

Margarita stretched both hands to Woland in entreaty, but found she could come no nearer to him.

Margarita in her black cloak and the master in his hospital dressing-gown walked out into the corridor of Berlioz's flat, where the light was burning and Woland's retinue was waiting for them. As they passed along the corridor Hella, helped by the cat, carried the suitcase with the novel and Margarita Nikolayev-na's few belongings.

At the door of the flat Koroviev bowed and vanished, while the others escorted them down the staircase. It was empty. As they passed the third floor landing a faint bump was heard, but no one paid it any attention. At the front door of staircase 6 Azazello blew into the air and as they entered the dark courtyard they saw a man in boots and peaked cap sound asleep on the doorstep and a large, black car standing by the entrance with dimmed lights. Barely visible in the driver's seat was the outline of a crow.

Margarita was just about to sit down when she gave a stifled cry of despair:

What had happened was this: shortly before Margarita, the master and their escort had left No. 50, a shrivelled woman carrying a bag and a tin can had emerged from No. 48, the flat immediately below. It was Anna--the same Anna who the previous Wednesday had spilt the sunflower-seed oil near the turnstile with such disastrous consequences for Berlioz.

Nobody knew and no one probably ever will know what this woman was doing in Moscow or what she lived on. She was to be seen every day either with her tin can or her bag or both, sometimes at the oil-shop, sometimes at the market, sometimes outside the block of flats or on the staircase, but mostly in the kitchen of flat No. 48, where she lived. She was notorious for being a harbinger of disaster wherever she went and she was nicknamed ' Anna the Plague '.

Anna the Plague usually got up very early in the morning, but this morning something roused her long before dawn, soon after midnight. Her key turned in the door, her nose poked through and was followed by Anna herself, who slammed the door behind her. She was just about to set off on some errand when the door banged on the upstairs landing, a man came bounding downstairs, crashed into Anna and knocked her sideways so hard that she hit the back of her head against the wall.

The man, who was wearing underclothes and a cap and carrying a suitcase, answered in a sleepy voice with his eyes closed:

Then he dashed off--not downstairs but upstairs again to where the windowpane had been broken by Poplavsky's foot, and through it he glided feet first out into the courtyard. Forgetting about her aching head, Anna gasped and rushed up to the broken window. She lay flat on the landing floor and stuck her head out in the courtyard, expecting to see the mortal remains of the man with the suitcase lit up by the courtyard lamp. But there was absolutely nothing to be seen on the courtyard pavement.

As far as Anna could tell, this weird sleepwalker had flown out of the house like a bird, leaving not a trace. She crossed herself and thought: ' It's that No. 50! No wonder people say it's haunted . . .'

The thought had hardly crossed her mind before the door upstairs slammed again and someone else came running down. Anna pressed herself to the wall and saw a respectable looking gentleman with a little beard and, so it seemed to her, a slightly piggish face, who slipped past her and like the first man left the building through the window, also without hitting the

ground below. Anna had long since forgotten her original reason for coming out, and stayed on the staircase, crossing herself, moaning and talking to herself. After a short while a third man, with no beard but with a round clean-shaven face and wearing a shirt, emerged and shot through the window in turn.

To give Anna her due she was of an enquiring turn of mind and she decided to wait and see if there were to be any further marvels. The upstairs door opened again and a whole crowd started coming downstairs, this time not running but walking like ordinary people. Anna ran down from the window back to her own front door, quickly opened it, hid behind it and kept her eye, wild with curiosity, fixed to the crack which she left open.

An odd sick-looking man, pale with a stubbly beard, in a black cap and dressing-gown, was walking unsteadily downstairs, carefully helped by a lady wearing what looked to Anna in the gloom like a black cassock. The lady was wearing some transparent slippers, obviously foreign, but so torn and shredded that she was almost barefoot. It was indecent--bedroom slippers and quite obviously naked except for a black gown billowing out as she walked! ' That No. 50!' Anna's mind was already savouring the story she was going to tell the neighbours tomorrow.

After this lady came a naked girl carrying a suitcase and helped by an enormous black cat. Rubbing her eyes, Anna could barely help bursting into a shriek of pure amazement. Last in the procession was a short, limping foreigner with a wall eye, no jacket, a white evening-dress waistcoat and a bow tie. Just as the whole party had filed downstairs past Anna's door, something fell on to the landing with a gentle thump.

When the sound of footsteps had died away, Anna wriggled out of her doorway like a snake, put down her tin can, dropped on to her stomach and started groping about on the landing floor. Suddenly she found herself holding something heavy wrapped in a table-napkin. Her eyes started from her head as she untied the napkin and lifted the jewel close to eyes that burned with a wolfish greed. A storm of thoughts whirled round her mind:

Anna hid her find in the front of her blouse, picked up her tin can and was just about to abandon her errand and slip back indoors when she was suddenly confronted by the coatless man with the white shirtfront, who whispered to her in a soft voice :

Without another word but with fingers as hard and as cold as the handrail of a bus, the man in the white shirtfront gripped Anna's throat so tightly that he prevented all air from entering her lungs. The tin can fell

from her hand. Having stopped Anna from breathing for a while, the jacketless stranger removed his fingers from her neck. Gasping for breath, Anna smiled.

With the horseshoe in his possession again, the stranger began bowing and scraping to Anna, shook her by the hand and thanked her warmly in a thick foreign accent:

In one leap the generous stranger had jumped down a whole flight of stairs, but before vanishing altogether he shouted up at her, this time without a trace of an accent:

Utterly confused by events and by the singing in her ears, Anna could do nothing for a long time but stand on the staircase and croak: ' Mem! Merci! ' until long after the stranger had vanished.

Having returned Woland's present to Margarita, Azazello said goodbye to her, enquiring if she was comfortably seated ; Hella gave her a smacking kiss and the cat pressed itself affectionately to her hand. With a wave to the master as he lowered himself awkwardly into his seat and a wave to the crow, the party vanished into thin air, without bothering to return indoors and walk up the staircase. The crow switched on the headlights and drove out of the courtyard past the man asleep at the entrance. Finally the lights of the big black car were lost as they merged into the rows of streetlamps on silent, empty Sadovaya Street.

An hour later Margarita was sitting, softly weeping from shock and happiness, in the basement of the little house in one of the sidestreets off the Arbat. In the master's study all was as it had been before that terrible autumn night of the year before. On the table, covered with a velvet cloth, stood a vase of lily-of-the-valley and a shaded lamp. The charred manuscript-book lay in front of her, beside it a pile of undamaged copies. The house was silent. Next door on a divan, covered by his hospital dressing-gown, the master lay in a deep sleep, his regular breathing inaudible from the next room.

Drying her tears, Margarita picked up one of the unharmed folios and found the place that she had been reading before she had met Azazello beneath the Kremlin wall. She had no wish to sleep. She smoothed the manuscript tenderly as one strokes a favourite cat and turning it over in

her hands she inspected it from every angle, stopping now on the title page, now at the end. A fearful thought passed through her mind that it was nothing more than a piece of wizardry, that the folio might vanish from sight, that she would wake up and find that she was in her bedroom at home and it was time to get up and stoke the boiler. But this was only a last terrible fantasy, the echo of long-borne suffering. Nothing vanished, the all-powerful Woland really was all-powerful and Margarita was able to leaf through the manuscript to her heart's content, till dawn if she wanted to, stare at it, kiss it and re-read the words :

27. How the Procurator Tried to Save Judas of Karioth

The mist that came from the Mediterranean sea blotted out the city that Pilate so detested. The suspension bridges connecting the temple with the grim fortress of Antonia vanished, the murk descended from the sky and drowned the winged gods above the hippodrome, the crenellated Hasmonaean palace, the bazaars, the caravanserai, the alleyways, the pools . . . Jerusalem, the great city, vanished as though it had never been. The mist devoured everything, frightening every living creature in Jerusalem and its surroundings. The city was engulfed by a strange cloud which had crept over it from the sea towards the end of that day, the fourteenth of the month of Nisan.

It had emptied its belly over Mount Golgotha, where the executioners had hurriedly despatched their victims, it had flowed over the temple of Jerusalem, pouring down in smoky cascades from the mound of the temple and invading the Lower City. It had rolled through open windows and driven people indoors from the winding streets. At first it held back its rain and only spat lightning, the flame cleaving through the smoking black vapour, lighting up the great pile of the temple and its glittering, scaly roof. But the flash passed in a moment and the temple was plunged again into an abyss of darkness. Several times it loomed through the murk to vanish again and each time its disappearance was accompanied by a noise like the crack of doom.

Other shimmering flashes lit up the palace of Herod the Great facing the temple on the western hill; as they did so the golden statues, eyeless and fearful, seemed to leap up into the black sky and stretch their arms

towards it. Then the fire from heaven would be quenched again and a great thunderclap would banish the gilded idols into the mist.

The rainstorm burst suddenly and the storm turned into a hurricane. On the very spot near a marble bench in the garden, where that morning the Procurator had spoken to the High Priest, a thunderbolt snapped the trunk of a cypress as though it had been a twig. With the water vapour and the hail, the balcony under the arcade was swept with torn rose-heads, magnolia leaves, small branches and sand as the hurricane scourged the garden.

At the moment when the storm broke only the Procurator was left beneath the arcade.

He was no longer sitting in a chair but lying on a couch beside a small low table laid with food and jugs of wine. Another, empty, couch stood on the far side of the table. An untidy, blood-red puddle lay spread out at the Procurator's feet amid the sherds of a broken jug. The servant who had laid the Procurator's table had been so terrified by his look and so nervous at his apparent displeasure that the Procurator had lost his temper with him and smashed the jug on the mosaic floor, saying:

The African's black face turned grey, mortal terror came into his eyes and he trembled so much that he almost broke another jug, but the Procurator waved him away and the slave ran off, leaving the pool of spilt wine.

As the hurricane struck, the African hid himself in a niche beside a statue of a white, naked woman with bowed head, afraid to show himself too soon yet frightened of missing the call should the Procurator summon him.

Lying on his couch in the half-darkness of the storm the Procurator poured out his own wine, drank it in long gulps, stretching out his arm for an occasional piece of bread which he crumbled and ate in little pieces. Now and again he would swallow an oyster, chew a slice of lemon and drink again. Without the roar of water, without the claps of thunder which seemed to be about to smash the palace roof, without the crash of hail that hammered on the steps leading up to the balcony, a listener might have heard the Procurator muttering as he talked to himself. And if the momentary flashes of lightning had shone with a steady light an observer might have noticed that the Procurator's face, the eyes inflamed with insomnia and wine, showed impatience ; that the Procurator's glance was not only taken up by the two yellow roses drowning in the red puddle, but that he was constantly turning his face towards the garden, towards the water-lashed sand and mud; that he was expecting someone, waiting impatiently.

A little time passed and the veil of water in front of the Procurator began to thin out. The storm, though still furious, was abating. No more branches creaked and fell. The lightning and thunder grew more infrequent. The cloud hovering over Jerusalem was no longer violet edged with white but a normal grey, the rearguard of the storm that was now moving onwards

towards the Dead Sea.

Soon the sound of the rain could be distinguished from the noise of water running down the gutters and on to the staircase down which the Procurator had walked to the square to pronounce sentence. At last even the tinkle of the fountain, drowned until now, could be heard. It grew lighter. Windows of blue began to appear in the grey veil as it fled eastward.

Then from far away, above the weak patter of rain, the Procurator heard faint trumpet-calls and the tattoo of several score of horses' hooves. The sound caused the Procurator to stir and his expression to liven. The ala was returning from Mount Golgotha. To judge from the sound, they were just crossing the hippodrome square.

At last the Procurator heard the long-awaited footsteps and the slap of shoe-leather on the staircase leading to the upper terrace of the garden in front of the balcony. The Procurator craned his neck and his eyes shone expectantly.

Between the two marble lions there appeared first the cowled

head, then the figure of a man closely wrapped in his soaking wet cloak. It was the same man with whom the Procurator, before pronouncing sentence, had held a whispered conference in a darkened room of the palace, and who had watched the execution as he played with a stick seated on a three-legged stool.

Walking straight through the puddles, the cowled man crossed the terrace, crossed the mosaic floor of the balcony, and raising his hand said in a pleasant, high-pitched voice :

The man pushed back his cowl, revealing a completely wet head with the hair plastered down over his forehead. With a polite smile on his clean-shaven face he declined the offer of a change of clothing, assuring the Procurator that a little rain would do him no harm.

The Procurator's visitor needed only a short while to dry his hair, change his clothes, his footgear, and tidy himself up, and he soon reappeared on the balcony in dry sandals, in a purple army cloak and with his hair combed.

At that moment the sun returned to Jerusalem and before setting in the Mediterranean it sent its parting rays over the Procurator's hated city and gilded the balcony steps. The fountain was now playing again at full strength, pigeons had landed on the terrace, cooing and hopping between the broken twigs and pecking at the sand. The red puddle was mopped up, the fragments removed, a steaming plateful of meat was set on the table.

The man reclined, the servant poured some thick red wine into his cup. Another servant, bending cautiously over Pilate's shoulder, filled the Procurator's cup, after which he dismissed them both with a gesture.

While the visitor ate and drank Pilate sipped his wine and watched his guest through narrowed eyes. The man was middle-aged with very pleasant, neat, round features and a fleshy nose. The colour of his hair was vague, though its colour lightened as it dried out. His nationality was hard to guess. His main feature was a look of good nature, which was belied by his eyes --or rather not so much by his eyes as by a peculiar way of looking at the person facing him. Usually the man kept his small eyes shielded under eyelids that were curiously enlarged, even swollen. At these moments the chinks in his eyelids showed nothing but mild cunning, the look of a man with a sense of humour. But there were times when the man who was now the Procurator's guest opened his eyelids wide and gave a person a sudden, unwavering stare as though to search out an inconspicuous spot on his nose. It only lasted a moment, after which the lids dropped, the eyes narrowed again and they shone with goodwill and sly intelligence.

The visitor accepted a second cup of wine, swallowed a few oysters with obvious relish, tasted the boiled vegetables and ate a piece of meat. When he had eaten his fill he praised the wine :

The visitor placed his hand on his heart and declined the offer of more to eat, saying that he had had enough. Pilate refilled his own cup and his guest did the same. The two men each poured a libation into the dish of meat and the Procurator, raising his cup, said in a loud voice :

Both drank their wine to its dregs and the Africans cleared the dishes from the table, leaving fruit and jugs of wine. The Procurator dismissed the servants, and was left alone with his visitor under the arcade.

At this the visitor directed his peculiar stare at the Procurator, but Pilate was gazing wearily into the distance, frowning with distaste and contemplating the quarter of the city which lay at his feet, fading into the dusk. The visitor's glance also faded and his eyelids lowered again.

The jug clattered against his cup as the Procurator poured himself some more wine. Having drained it he said :

The visitor nodded, listening intently.

remarkable diligence in carrying out your task as chief of the secret service to the Procurator makes it my pleasant duty to mention it in a report to Rome.'

The visitor blushed as he rose, bowed to the Procurator and said:

At this the visitor again gave the Procurator his open-eyed glance, then, as was fitting, hooded his eyes again.

Arthanius looked up, reflected and answered :

fact is--I have received information that he is to be murdered tonight.'

At this the visitor not only turned his glance on the Procurator but held it for a while and then replied :

The visitor adjusted the heavy belt under his cloak and said:

The visitor looked surprised.

beggars, I wanted to throw them some money, I had none and borrowed from

beneath it and handed it to Arthanius. The man bowed, took the purse and put it under his cloak.

26. The Burial

It may have been the twilight which seemed to cause such a sharp change in the Procurator's appearance. He appeared to have aged visibly and he looked hunched and worried. Once he glanced round and shuddered, staring at the empty chair with his cloak thrown over its back. The night of the feast was approaching, the evening shadows were playing tricks and the exhausted Procurator may have thought he had seen someone sitting in the chair. In a moment of superstitious fear the Procurator shook the cloak, then walked away and began pacing the balcony, occasionally rubbing his hands, drinking from the goblet on the table, or halting to stare unseeingly at the mosaic floor as though trying to decipher some writing in it.

For the second time that day a brooding depression overcame him. Wiping his brow, where he felt only a faintly nagging memory of the hellish pain from that morning, the Procurator racked his brain in an attempt to define the cause of his mental agony. He soon realised what it was, but unable to face it, he tried to deceive himself. It was clear to him that this morning he had irretrievably lost something and now he was striving to compensate for that loss with a trivial substitute, which took the form of belated action. His self-deception consisted in trying to persuade himself that his

actions this evening were no less significant than the sentence which he had passed earlier in the day. But in this attempt the Procurator had little success.

At one of his turns he stopped abruptly and whistled. In reply there came a low bark from the twilight shadows and a gigantic grey-coated dog with pointed ears bounded in from the garden, wearing a gold-studded collar.

The dog stood up on its hind legs, put its forepaws on its master's shoulders, almost knocking him over, and licked his cheek. The Procurator sat down in a chair. Banga, tongue hanging out and panting fast, lay down at Pilate's feet with an expression of delight that the thunderstorm was over, the only thing in the world that frightened this otherwise fearless animal; delighted, too, because it was back again with the man it loved, respected and regarded as the most powerful being on earth, the ruler of all men, thanks to whom the dog too felt itself a specially privileged and superior creature. But lying at his feet and gazing into the twilit garden without even looking at Pilate the dog knew at once that its master was troubled. It moved, got up, went round to Pilate's side and laid its forepaws and head on the Procurator's knees, smearing the hem of his cloak with wet sand. Banga's action seemed to mean that he wanted to comfort his master and was prepared to face misfortune with him. This he tried to express in his eyes and in the forward set of his ears. These two, dog and man who loved each other, sat in vigil together on the balcony that night of the feast.

Meanwhile Arthanius was busy. Leaving the upper terrace of the garden, he walked down the steps to the next terrace and turned right towards the barracks inside the palace grounds. These quarters housed the two centuries who had accompanied the Procurator to Jerusalem for the feast-days, together with the Procurator's secret bodyguard commanded by Arthanius. He spent a little while in the barracks, no longer than ten minutes, but immediately afterwards three carts drove out of the barrack yard loaded with entrenching tools and a vat of water, and escorted by a section of fifteen mounted men wearing grey cloaks. Carts and escort left the palace grounds by a side-gate, set off westward, passed through a gateway in the city wall and first took the Bethlehem road northward; they reached the crossroads by the Hebron gate and there turned on to the Jaffa road, along the route taken by the execution party that morning. By now it was dark and the moon had risen on the horizon.

Soon after the carts and their escort section had set off, Ar-thanius also left the palace on horseback, having changed into a shabby black chiton, and rode into the city. After a while he could have been seen riding towards the fortress of Antonia, situated immediately north of the great temple. The visitor spent an equally short time in the fortress, after which his route took him to the winding, crooked streets of the Lower City. He had now changed his mount to a mule.

Thoroughly at home in the city, the man easily found the street he was looking for. It was known as the street of the Greeks, as it contained a number of Greek shops, including one that sold carpets. There the man stopped his mule, dismounted and tethered it to a ring outside the gate. The shop was shut. The guest passed through a wicket gate in the wall beside the shop door and entered a small rectangular courtyard, fitted out as a stables. Turning the corner of the yard the visitor reached the ivy-grown verandah of the owner's house and looked round him. House and stables were dark, the lamps not yet lit. He called softly:

At the sound of his voice a door creaked and a young woman, her head uncovered, appeared on the verandah in the evening dusk. She leaned over the railings, looking anxiously to see who had arrived. Recognising the visitor, she gave him a welcoming smile, nodded and waved.

Arthanius glanced round, mounted the stone steps and went indoors with the woman. Here he spent no more than five minutes, after which he left the house, pulled his cowl lower over his eyes and went out into the street. By now candles were being lit in all the houses, there was a large feast-day crowd in the streets, and Arthanius on his mule was lost in the stream of riders and people on foot. Where he went from there is unknown.

When Arthanius had left her, the woman called Niza began to change in a great hurry, though despite the difficulty of finding the things she needed in her dark room she lit no candle and did not call her servant. Only when she was ready, with a black shawl over her head, did she say :

Out of the dark her old serving-woman grumbled in reply :

At the same time a young man left a tumbledown little house with its blind side to the street and whose only windows gave on to the courtyard, and passed through the wicket into an unpaved alley that descended in steps to one of the city's pools. He wore a white kefiyeh falling to his shoulders, a new dark-blue fringed tallith fo:r the feast-day, and creaking new sandals. Dressed up for the occasion, the handsome, hook-nosed young man set off boldly, overtaking passers-by as he hurried home to the solemn Passover-night table, watching the candles as they were lit in house after

house. The young man took the road leading past the bazaar towards the palace of Caiaphas the High Priest at the foot of the temple hill.

After a while he entered the gates of Caiaphas' palace and left it a short time later.

Leaving the palace, already bright with candles and torches and festive bustle,, the young man returned, with an even bolder and more cheerful step, to the Lower City. At the corner where the street joined the bazaar square, he was passed in the seething crowd by a woman walking with the hip-swinging gait of a prostitute and wearing a black shawl low over her eyes. As she overtook him the woman raised her shawl slightly and flashed a glance in the young man's direction, but instead of slowing down she walked faster as though trying to run away from him.

The young man not only noticed the woman but recognised her. He gave a start, halted, stared perplexedly at her back and at once set off to catch her up. Almost knocking over a man carrying a jug, the young man drew level with the woman and panting with agitation called out to her :

The woman turned, frowned with a look of chilling irritation and coldly replied in Greek :

So excited that his heart began to leap like a wild bird in a cage, Judas asked in a jerky whisper, afraid that the passers-by might hear:

In a childish, pleading voice Judas whispered distractedly :

Niza and Judas vanished from the bazaar and began whispering under the gateway of a courtyard.

Judas stood alone for some time, trying to collect his whirling thoughts. Among other things he tried to think how he would explain his absence from the Passover table to his parents. He stood and tried to work out some lie, but in his excitement his mind refused to function properly, and still lacking an excuse he slowly walked out of the gateway.

Now he took another direction and instead of making for the Lower City he turned back towards the palace of Caiaphas. The celebrations had already begun. From windows on all sides came the murmur of the Passover ceremony. Latecomers hastening home urged on their donkeys, whipping them and shouting at them. On foot Judas hurried on, not noticing the menacing turrets of the fortress of Antonia, deaf to the call of trumpets from the fortress, oblivious of the Roman mounted patrol with their torches that threw an alarming glare across his path.

As he turned past the fortress Judas saw that two gigantic seven-branched candlesticks had been lit at a dizzy height above the temple. But he only saw them in a blur. They seemed like dozens of lamps that burned over Jerusalem in rivalry with the single lamp climbing high above the city--the moon.

Judas had no thought for anything now but his urgent haste to leave the city as quickly as possible by the Gethsemane gate. Occasionally he thought he could see, among the backs and faces of the people in front of him, a figure dancing along and drawing him after it. But it was an illusion. Judas realised that Niza must be well ahead of him. He passed a row of

moneychangers' shops and at last reached the Gethsemane gate. Here, burning with impatience, he was forced to wait. A camel caravan was coming into the city, followed by a mounted Syrian patrol, which Judas mentally cursed. . . .

But the delay was short and the impatient Judas was soon outside the city wall. To his left was a small cemetery, beside it the striped tents of a band of pilgrims. Crossing the dusty, moonlit road Judas hurried on towards the stream Kedron and crossed it, the water bubbling softly under his feet as he leaped from stone to stone. Finally he reached the Gethsemane bank and saw with joy that the road ahead was deserted. Not far away could be seen the half-ruined gateway of the olive grove.

After the stifling city Judas was struck by the intoxicating freshness of the spring night. Across a garden fence the scent of myrtles and acacia was blown from the fields of Gethsemane.

The gateway was unguarded and a few minutes later Judas was far into the olive grove and running beneath the mysterious shadows of the great, branching olive trees. The way led uphill. Judas climbed, panting, occasionally emerging from darkness into chequered carpets of moonlight which reminded him of the carpets in the shop kept by Niza's jealous husband.

Soon an oil-press came in sight in a clearing to Judas' left, with its heavy stone crushing-wheel and a pile of barrels. There was no one in the olive grove--work had stopped at sunset and choirs of nightingales were singing above Judas' head.

He was near his goal. He knew that in a moment from the darkness to his right he would hear the quiet whisper of running water from the grotto. There was the sound now and the air was cooler near the grotto. He checked his pace and called:

But instead of Niza slipping out from behind a thick olive trunk, the stocky figure of a man jumped out on to the path. Something glittered momentarily in his hand. With a faint cry Judas started running back, but a second man blocked his way.

The first man asked Judas:

Hope welled up in Judas' heart and he cried desperately :

The man snatched the purse from Judas' hand. At the same moment a knife was rammed into Judas' back under his shoulder-blade. He pitched forward, throwing up his hands, fingers clutching. The man in front caught Judas on his knife and thrust it up to the hilt into Judas' heart.

unlike his own, youthful, high-pitched voice and made not another sound. His body hit the ground so hard that the air whistled as it was knocked out of his lungs.

Then a third figure stepped out on to the path, wearing a hooded cloak,

The third man squatted down beside the body and looked into his face. It seemed as white as chalk, with an expression not unlike spiritual beauty.

A few seconds later there was not a living soul on the path. The lifeless body lay with arms outstretched. Its left foot was in a patch of moonlight that showed up every strap and lace of the man's sandal. The whole of Gethsemane rang with the song of nightingales.

The man with the hood left the path and plunged deep through the olive grove, heading southward. He climbed over the wall at the southernmost corner of the olive grove where the upper course of masonry jutted out. Soon he reached the bank of Kedron, where he waded in and waited in midstream until he saw the distant outlines of two horses and a man beside them, also standing in the stream. Water flowed past, washing their hooves. The groom mounted one of the horses, the cowled man the other and both set off walking down the bed of the stream, pebbles crunching beneath the horses' hooves. The riders left the water, climbed up the bank and followed the line of the city walls at a walk. Then the groom galloped ahead and disappeared from sight while the man in the cowl stopped his horse, dismounted on the empty road, took off his cloak, turned it inside out, and producing a flat-topped, uncrested helmet from the folds, put it on. The rider was now in military uniform with a short sword at his hip. He flicked the reins and the fiery cavalry charger broke into a trot. He had not far to go before he rode up to the southern gate of Jerusalem.

Torch-flames danced and flickered restlessly under the arch of the gate where the sentries from the second cohort of the Lightning legion sat on stone benches playing dice. As the mounted officer approached the soldiers jumped up, the officer waved to them and rode into the city.

The town was lit up for the festival. Candle flames played at every window and from each one came the sound of sing-song incantations. Glancing occasionally into the windows that opened on to the street the rider saw people at their tables set with kid's meat and cups of wine between the dishes of bitter herbs. Whistling softly the rider made his way at a leisurely trot through the deserted streets of the Lower City, heading towards the fortress of Antonia and looking up now and then at vast seven-branched candlesticks flaring over the temple or at the moon above them.

The palace of Herod the Great had no part in the ceremonies of Passover night. Lights were burning in the outbuildings on the south side where the officers of the Roman cohort and the Legate of the Legion were quartered, and there were signs of movement and life. The frontal wings, with their one involuntary occupant--the Procurator--with their arcades and gilded statues, seemed blinded by the brilliance of the moonlight. Inside the palace was darkness and silence.

The Procurator, as he had told Arthanius, preferred not to go inside. He had ordered a bed to be prepared on the balcony where he had dined and where he had conducted the interrogation that morning. The Procurator lay down on the couch, but he could not sleep. The naked moon hung far up in the clear sky and for several hours the Procurator lay staring at it.

Sleep at last took pity on the hegemon towards midnight. Yawning spasmodically, the Procurator unfastened his cloak and threw it off, took off the strap that belted his tunic with its steel sheath-knife, put it on the chair beside the bed, took off his sandals and stretched out. Banga at once jumped up beside him on the bed and lay down, head to head. Putting his arm round the dog's neck the Procurator at last closed his eyes. Only then did the dog go to sleep.

The couch stood in half darkness, shaded from the moon by a pillar, though a long ribbon of moonlight stretched from the staircase to the bed. As the Procurator drifted away from reality he set off along that path of light, straight up towards the moon. In his sleep he even laughed from happiness at the unique beauty of that transparent blue pathway. He was walking with Banga and the vagrant philosopher beside him. They were arguing about a weighty and complex problem over which neither could gain the upper hand. They disagreed entirely, which made their argument the more absorbing and interminable. The execution, of course, had been a pure misunderstanding : after all this same man, with his ridiculous philosophy that all men were good, was walking beside him--consequently he was alive. Indeed the very thought of executing such a man was absurd. There had been no execution I It had never taken place! This thought comforted him as he strode along the moonlight pathway.

They had as much time to spare as they wanted, the storm would not break until evening. Cowardice was undoubtedly one of the most terrible sins. Thus spake Yeshua Ha-Notsri. No, philosopher, I disagree--it is the most terrible sin of all!

Had he not shown cowardice, the man who was now Procurator of Judaea but who had once been a Tribune of the legion on that day in the Valley of the Virgins when the wild Germans had so nearly clubbed Muribellum the Giant to death? Have pity on me, philosopher! Do you, a man of your intelligence, imagine that the Procurator of Judaea would ruin his career for the sake of a man who had committed a crime against Caesar?

Of course he would risk ruining his career. This morning he had not been ready to, but now at night, having thoroughly weighed the matter, he was prepared to ruin himself if need be. He would do anything to save this crazy, innocent dreamer, this miraculous healer, from execution.

The hegemon's awakening was all the more fearful after the euphoria of his dream. Banga started to growl at the moon, and the blue pathway, slippery as butter, collapsed in front of the Procurator. He opened his eyes and the first thing he remembered was that the execution had taken place. Then the Procurator groped mechanically for Banga's collar, then turned his aching eyes in search of the moon and noticed that it had moved slightly to one side and was silver in colour. Competing with its light was another more unpleasant and disturbing light that nickered in front of him. Holding a naming, crackling torch, Muribellum scowled with fear and dislike at the dangerous beast, poised to spring.

Startled, Mark stared at the Procurator, who recollected himself. To excuse his pointless remark, spoken while still half-dreaming, the Procurator said :

The centurion was replaced by the man in the cowl.

Before speaking Arthanius gave his habitual glance round and moved into a shadow. Having ensured that apart from Banga there were no strangers on the balcony, he said :

Arthanius felt that of the two pairs of eyes watching him; one was a dog's, the other a wolf's. From under his tunic he took out a bloodstained purse that was sealed with two seals.

The Procurator smiled and said :

Arthanius did not reply.

The Procurator shuddered and gave up trying to lace his sandal, which refused to tie.

To this the Procurator received the cool reply :

Arthanius bowed, moved a chair closer to the bed and sat down, his sword clinking.

the city limits. The street is no place for a clandestine murder. Therefore he must have been enticed into some cellar or courtyard. But the secret service has already made a thorough search of the Lower City and if he were there they would have found him by now. They have not found him and I am therefore convinced that he is not in the city. If he had been killed a long way from Jerusalem, then the packet of money could not have been thrown into the High Priest's palace so soon. He was murdered near the city after they had lured him out.'

Arthanius replied gravely :

somewhere where there are trees. It's obvious--there is no place round about Jerusalem that answers to that description except Gethsemane. He cannot have gone far.'

once.

Even in the dark Pilate's eyes could be seen glittering.

himself?'

Here Arthanius gave Pilate his peculiar stare, thought a moment, and answered:

Pilate was obviously obsessed with the problem of the murder of Judas of Karioth, although it had been fully explained,

He said reflectively:

While Arthanius had been engaged on the Judas case, a secret service squad under the command of Arthanius' deputy had reached the hill shortly before dark. At the hilltop one body was missing. Pilate shuddered and said hoarsely :

was excited, almost delirious, begging, threatening, cursing . . .'

Pilate stared at Arthanius for a moment with wide-open eyes, then said:

With a bow Arthanius said :

Arthanius had not even reached the garden when servants began to appear bearing lights. Three candlesticks were placed on the table in front of the Procurator and instantly the moonlit night retreated to the garden as though Arthanius had taken it with him. In his place a small, thin stranger mounted to the balcony accompanied by the giant centurion. At a nod from the Procurator Muribellum turned and marched out.

Pilate studied the new arrival with an eager, slightly fearful look, in the way people look at someone of whom they have heard a great deal, who has been in their thoughts and whom they finally meet.

The man who now appeared was about forty, dark, ragged, covered in dried mud, with a suspicious, wolfish stare. In a word he was extremely unsightly and looked most of all like one of the city beggars who were to be found in crowds on the terraces of the temple or in the bazaars of the noisy and dirty Lower City.

The silence was long and made awkward by the man's strange behaviour. His face worked, he staggered and he would have fallen if he had not put out a dirty hand to grasp the edge of the table.

Matthew gazed mistrustfully at the Procurator, took a step towards the chair, gave a frightened look at its gilded armrests and sat down on the floor beside it.

• Why?'

The centurion pulled a dirty breadknife out of one of the two leather sheaths on his belt, handed it to the Procurator and withdrew.

Pilate inspected the wide blade and tested the edge with his finger. Then he said :

have written what Yeshua has said.'

The Levite looked at Pilate with hatred and smiled a smile of such ill-will that his face was completely distorted.

The Levite fumbled in his shirt-front and pulled out a roll of parchment. Pilate took it, unrolled it, spread it out in the light of two candles and with a frown began to study the barely decipherable script. The uneven strokes were hard to understand and Pilate frowned and bent over the parchment, tracing the lines with his finger. He nevertheless managed to discern that the writings were a disjointed sequence of sayings, dates, household notes and snatches of poetry. Pilate managed to read:

Grimacing with strain, Pilate squinted and read: '... we shall see a pure river of the water of life . . . mankind will look at the sun through transparent crystal. . .'

Pilate shuddered. In the last few lines of the parchment he deciphered the words: '. . . greatest sin ... cowardice . . .'

Pilate rolled up the parchment and with a brusque movement handed it back to the Levite.

The Levite stood up and replied :

The same evil smile twisted Matthew's face and he said :

The Levite shook his head and the Procurator went on :

Matthew suddenly walked over to Pilate's table, leaned on it with both hands and staring at the Procurator with burning eyes he whispered to him :

At this the Procurator's eyes gleamed with pleasure. Beckoning Matthew the Levite closer he said :

The Levite jumped back from the table, stared wildly round and cried:

Pilate a.nswered him :

• I did it.

Matthew opened his mouth and stared at the Procurator, who said quietly:

The Levite thought for a moment, relented and finally said :

An hour had passed since the Levite had left the palace. The dawn silence was only disturbed by the quiet tread of the sentries in the garden. The moon was fading and on the other edge of heaven there appeared the whitish speck of the morning star. The candles had long been put out. The Procurator lay on his couch. He was sleeping with his hand under his cheek and breathing noiselessly. Beside him slept Banga.

Thus Pontius Pilate, fifth Procurator of Judaea, met the dawn of the fifteenth of Nisan.

27. The Last of Flat No.50

Day was breaking as Margarita read the last words of the chapter '. . . Thus Pontius Pilate, fifth Procurator of Judaea, met the dawn of the

fifteenth of Nisan.'

From the yard she could hear the lively, cheerful early morning chatter of sparrows in the branches of the willow and the lime tree.

Margarita got up from her chair, stretched and only then realised how physically exhausted she felt and how much she wanted to sleep. Mentally, though, Margarita was in perfect form. Her mind was clear and she was completely unmoved by the fact that she had spent a night in the supernatural. It caused her no distress to think that she had been at Satan's ball, that by some miracle the master had been restored to her, that the novel had risen from the ashes, that everything was back in its place in the basement flat after the expulsion of the wretched Aloysius Mogarych. In a word, her encounter with Woland had done her no psychological harm. Everything was as it should be.

She went into the next room, made sure that the master was sound asleep, put out the unnecessary light on the bedside table and stretched out on the other little divan, covering herself with an old, torn blanket. A minute later she was in a dreamless sleep. Silence reigned in the basement rooms and in the whole house, silence filled the little street.

But on that early Saturday morning there was no sleep for a whole floor of a certain Moscow office which was busy investigating the Woland case ; in nine offices the lamps had been burning all night. Their windows, looking out on to a large asphalted square which was being cleaned by slow, whirring vehicles with revolving brushes, competed with the rising sun in brightness.

Although the outlines of the case had been quite clear since the day before, when they had closed the Variety as a result of the disappearance of its management and the scandalous performance of black magic, everything was complicated by the incessant flow of new evidence.

The department in charge of this strange case now had the task of drawing together all the strands of the varied and confusing events, occurring all over Moscow, which included an apparent mixture of sheer devilry, hypnotic conjuring tricks and barefaced crime.

The first person summoned to the glaring electric light of that unsleeping floor was Arkady Apollonich Sempleyarov, the chairman of the Acoustics Commission.

On Friday evening after dinner, the telephone rang in his flat on Kamenny Most and a man's voice asked to speak to Arkady Apollonich. His wife, who had answered the call, announced grimly that Arkady Apollonich was unwell, had gone to lie down and could not come to the telephone. Nevertheless Arkady Apollonich was obliged to come when the voice said who was calling.

young cousin from Saratov. In a quarter of a minute, in underclothes and one slipper, Arkady Apollonich was babbling into the telephone :

His wife, all thought of Arkady Apollonich's infidelity instantly forgotten, put her terrified face round the door, waving a slipper in the air and whispering :

Arkady Apollonich spent the rest of the evening with the investigators.

The ensuing conversation was painful and unpleasant in the extreme ; he was not only made to give a completely frank account of that odious show and the fight in the box, but was obliged to tell everything about Militsa Andreyevna Pokobatko from Yelokhovskaya Street, as well as all about his cousin from Saratov and much more besides, the telling of which caused Arkady Apollonich inexpressible pain.

Naturally the evidence given by Arkady Apollonich--an intelligent and cultured man who had been an eyewitness of the show and who as an articulate and informed observer was not only able to give an excellent description of the mysterious masked magician and his two rascally assistants but who actually remembered that the magician's name was Woland--helped considerably to advance the enquiry. When Arkady Apollonich's evidence was compared with the evidence of the others, among them several of the ladies who had suffered such embarrassment after the show (including the woman in violet knickers who had so shocked Rimsky) and Karpov the usher who had been sent to Flat No. 50 at 302a, Sadovaya Street--it became immediately obvious where the culprit was to be found.

They went to No. 50 more than once and not only searched it with extreme thoroughness but tapped on the walls, examined the chimney-flues and looked for secret doors. None of this, however, produced any results and nothing was found during the visits to the flat. Yet someone was living in the flat, despite the fact that every official body in Moscow concerned with visiting foreigners stated firmly and categorically that there was not and could not be a magician called Woland in Moscow. He had definitely not registered on entry, he had shown no one his passport or any other documents, contracts or agreements and no one had so much as heard of him. Kitaitsev, the director of the programmes department of the Theatrical Commission, swore by all the saints that the missing Stepa Likhodeyev had never sent him a programme schedule for anyone called Woland for confirmation and had never telephoned Kitaitsev a word about Woland's arrival. Therefore he, Kitaitsev, failed completely to understand how Stepa could have allowed a show of this sort to be put on at the Variety. When he

was told that Arkady Apollonich had seen the performance with his own eyes, Kitaitsev could only spread his hands and raise his eyes to heaven. From those eyes alone it was obvious that Kitaitsev was as pure as crystal.

Prokhor Petrovich, the chairman of the Entertainments Commission . . .

He, incidentally, had re-entered his suit as soon as the police reached his office, to the ecstatic joy of Anna Richardovna and to the great annoyance of the police, who had been alerted for nothing. As soon as he was back at his post and wearing his striped grey suit, Prokhor Petrovich fully approved all the minutes that his suit had drafted during his short absence.

So Prokhor Petrovich obviously knew nothing about Woland either.

The sum total of their enquiries amounted to a conclusion which was little short of farcical: thousands of spectators, plus the Variety Theatre staff plus, finally, Arkady Apollonich, that highly intelligent man, had seen this magician and his thrice-cursed assistants, yet in the meantime all four had completely vanished. What could it mean? Had Woland been swallowed up by the earth or had he, as some claimed, never come to Moscow at all? If one accepted the first alternative, then he had apparently spirited away the entire Variety management with him; if you believed the second alternative, it meant that the theatre management itself, having first indulged in a minor orgy of destruction had decamped from Moscow leaving no trace.

The officer in charge of the case was, to give him his due, a man who knew his job. Rimsky, for instance, was tracked down with astounding speed. Merely by linking the Ace of Diamonds' behaviour at the taxi-rank near the cinema with certain timings, such as the time of the end of the show and the time at which Rimsky could have vanished, they were able to send an immediate telegram to Leningrad. An hour later (on Friday evening) the reply came back that Rimsky had been found in room 412 at the Astoria Hotel, on the fourth floor next to the room containing the repertory manager of one of the Moscow theatres then on tour in Leningrad, in that famous room with the blue-grey furniture and the luxurious bathroom.

Rimsky, found hiding in the wardrobe of his room at the Astoria, was immediately arrested and interrogated in Leningrad, after which a telegram reached Moscow stating that treasurer Rimsky was an irresponsible witness who had proved unwilling or incapable of replying coherently to questions and had done nothing but beg to be put into an armourplated strong-room under armed guard. An order was telegraphed to Leningrad for Rimsky to be escorted back to Moscow, and he returned under guard by the Friday evening train.

By Friday evening, too, they were on the track of Likhodeyev. Telegrams asking for information on Likhodeyev had been sent to every town and a reply came from Yalta that Likhodeyev was there but about to leave for Moscow by aeroplane.

The only person whose trail they failed to pick up was Varenukha. This man, known to the entire theatrical world of Moscow, seemed to have vanished

without trace.

Meanwhile investigations were in hand on related incidents in other parts of Moscow. An explanation was needed, for instance, of the baffling case of the office staff who had sung the ' Volga Boatmen ' song (Stravinsky, incidentally, cured them all within two hours by subcutaneous injections) and of other cases of people (and their victims) who had proffered various pieces of rubbish under the illusion that they were banknotes. The nastiest, the most scandalous and the most insoluble of all these episodes was, of course, the theft, in broad daylight, of Berlioz's head from the open coffin at Griboyedov.

The job of the team of twelve men assigned to the case was rather like that of someone with a knitting-needle trying to pick up stitches dropped all over Moscow.

One of the detectives called on Profes sor Stravinsky's clinic and began by asking for a list of all patients admitted during the past three days. By this means they discovered Nikanor Ivano-vich Bosoi and the unfortunate compere whose head had been wrenched off, although they were not greatly interested in these two. It was obvious now that they had both merely been victimised by the gang headed by this weird magician. In Ivan Nikolayich Bezdomny, however, the detective showed the very greatest interest.

Early on Friday evening the door of Ivan's room opened to admit a polite, fresh-faced young man- He looked quite unlike a detective, yet he was one of the best in the Moscow force. He saw lying in bed a pale, pinched-looking young man with lack-lustre, wandering eyes. The detective, a man of considerable charm and tact, said that he had come to see Ivan for a talk about the incident at Patriarch's Ponds two days previously.

The poet would have been triumphant if the detective had called earlier, on Thursday for instance when Ivan had been trying so loudly and passionately to induce someone to listen to his story about Patriarch's Ponds. Now people were at last coming to hear his version of the affair--just when his urge to help capture Professor Woland had completely evaporated.

For Ivan, alas, had altogether changed since the night of Berlioz's death. He was quite prepared to answer the detective's questions politely, but his voice and his expression betrayed his utter disinterest. The poet no longer cared about Berlioz's fate.

While Ivan had been dozing before the detective's arrival, a succession of images had passed before his mind's eye. He saw a strange, unreal, vanished city with great arcaded marble piles ;

with roofs that flashed in the sunlight; with the grim, black and pitiless tower of Antonia ; with a palace on the western hill plunged almost to roof-level in a garden of tropical greenery, and above the garden bronze statues that glowed in the setting sun ; with Roman legionaries clad in

armour marching beneath the city walls.

In his half-waking dream Ivan saw a man sitting motionless in a chair, a clean-shaven man with taut, yellowing skin who wore a white cloak lined with red, who sat and stared with loathing at this alien, luxuriant garden. Ivan saw, too, a treeless ochre-coloured hill with three empty cross-barred gibbets.

The events at Patriarch's Ponds no longer interested Ivan Bezdomny the poet.

A barely detectable smile of irony crossed Ivan's Ups as he replied:

These were the detective's last questions. He got up, shook hands with Ivan, wished him a speedy recovery and said that he soon hoped to read some new poetry of his.

The detective smiled politely and assured the poet that although he might be in a slight state of depression at the moment, it would soon pass.

The detective left Ivan, having gathered some extremely important evidence. Following the thread of events backwards from end to beginning, they could now pinpoint the source of the whole episode. The detective had no doubt that the events in question had all begun with the murder at Patriarch's Ponds. Neither Ivan, of course, nor the man in the check suit had pushed the unfortunate chairman of massolit under the tramcar;

n"o one had physically caused him to fall under the wheels, but the detective was convinced that Berlioz had thrown himself (or had fallen) beneath the tram while under hypnosis.

Although there was plenty of evidence and it was obvious whom they should arrest and where, it proved impossible to lay hands on them. There was no doubt that someone was in flat Nib. 50. Occasionally the telephone was answered by a quavering or a nasal voice, occasionally someone in the flat opened a window and the sound of a gramophone could be heard floating out. Yet whenever they went there the place was completely empty. They searched it at various hours of the day, each time going over it with a fine-tooth comb. The flat had been under suspicion for some time and a watch

had been placed on both the main stairs and the back stairs ; men were even posted on the roof among the chimney pots. The flat was playing tricks and there was nothing that anyone could do about it.

The case dragged on in this way until midnight on Friday, wlien Baron Maigel, wearing evening dress and patent-leather pumps, entered flat No. 50 as a guest. He was heard being let in. Exactly ten minutes later the authorities entered the flat without a sound. It was not only empty of tenants, but worse, there was not even a trace of Baron Maigel.

There things rested until dawn on Saturday, when some new anid valuable information came to light as a six-seater passenger aeroplane landed at Moscow airport having flown from the Crimea. Among its passengers was one extremely odd young man. He had heavy stubble on his face, had not washed for three days, his eyes were red with exhaustion and fright, he had no luggage and was somewhat eccentrically dressed. He wore a sheepskin hat, a felt cloak over a nightshirt and brand-new blue leather bedroom slippers. As he stepped off the gangway from the aircraft cabin, a group of expectant men approached him. A short while later the one and only manager of the Variety Theatre, Stepan Bogdanovich Likhodeyev, was facing the detectives. He added some new information. They were now able to establish that Woland had tricked his way into the Variety after hypnotising Stepa Likhodeyev and had then spirited Stepa God knows how many kilometres away from Moscow. This gave the authorities more evidence, but far from making their job any easier it made it if anything rather harder, because it was obviously not going to be so simple to arrest a person capable of the kind of sleight-of-hand to which Stepan Bogdanovich had fallen victim. Likhodeyev, at his own request, was locked up in a strong-room.

The next witness was Varenukha, arrested at home where he had returned after an unexplained absence lasting nearly forty-eight hours. In spite of his promise to Azazello, the house manager began by lying. He should not, however, be judged too harshly for this--Azazello had, after all, only forbidden him to lie on the telephone and in this instance Varenukha was talking without the help of a telephone. With a shifty look Ivan Savye-lich announced that on Thursday he had shut himself up in his office and had got drunk, after which he had gone somewhere-- he couldn't remember where; then somewhere else and drunk some loo-proof vodka ; had collapsed under a hedge--again he couldn't remember where. He was then told that his stupid and irrational behaviour was prejudicial to the course of justice and that he would be held responsible for it. At this Varenukha broke down, sobbing, and whispered in a trembling voice, glancing round fearfully, that he was only telling lies out of fear of Woland's gang, who had already roughed him up once and that he begged, prayed, longed to be locked up in an armoured cell.

They calmed Varenukha as well as they could, assuring him that he would be given protection without having to resort to a strong-room. He then admitted that he had never drunk any loo-proof vodka but had been beaten up by two characters, one with a wall eye and the other a stout man . . .

Just then Rimsky himself was brought in from the Leningrad train, but this grey-haired, terror-stricken, psychologically disturbed old man, scarcely recognisable as the treasurer of the Variety Theatre, stubbornly refused to speak the truth. Rimsky claimed that he had never seen Hella at his office window that night, nor had he seen Varenukha; he had simply felt ill and had taken the train to Leningrad in a fit of amnesia. Needless to say the ailing treasurer concluded his evidence by begging to be locked up in a strong-room.

Anna was arrested while trying to pay a store cashier with a ten-dollar bill. Her story about people flying out of the landing window and the horseshoe, which she claimed to have picked up in order to hand it over to the police, was listened to attentively.

Mere a detective waved a pen at Anna to shut up because she was boring them, and signed her release on a green form with which, to the general satisfaction, she left the building.

There followed a succession of others, among them Nikolai Ivanovich, who had been arrested thanks to the stupidity of his jealous wife in telling the police that her husband was missing. The detectives were not particularly surprised when Nikolai Ivanovich produced the joke certificate testifying that he had spent his time at Satan's ball. Nikolai Ivanovich departed slightly from the truth, however, when he described how he had carried Margarita Nikolayevna's naked maid through the air to bathe in the

river at some unknown spot and how Margarita Nikolay-evna herself had appeared naked at the window. He thought it unnecessary to recall, for instance, that he had appeared in the bedroom carrying Margarita's abandoned slip or that he had called Natasha ' Venus.' According to him, Natasha had flown out of the window, mounted him and made him fly away from Moscow . . .

Nikolai Ivanovich's evidence established the fact that both Margarita Nikolayevna and her maid Natasha had vanished without trace. Steps were taken to find them.

So the investigation progressed without a moment's break until Saturday morning. Meanwhile the city was seething with the most incredible rumours, in which a tiny grain of truth was embellished with a luxuriant growth of fantasy. People were saying that after the show at the Variety all two thousand spectators had rushed out into the street as naked as the day they were born ; that the police had uncovered a magic printing-press for counterfeiting money on Sadovaya Street; that a gang had kidnapped the five leading impresarios in Moscow but that the police had found them all again, and much more that was unrepeatable.

As it grew near lunchtime a telephone bell rang in the investigators' office. It was a report from Sadovaya Street that the haunted flat was showing signs of life again. Someone inside had apparently opened the windows, sounds of piano music and singing had been heard coming from it, and a black cat had been observed sunning itself on a windowsill.

At about four o'clock on that warm afternoon a large squad of men in plain clothes climbed out of three cars that had stopped a little way short of No. 302a, Sadovaya Street. Here the large squad divided into two smaller ones, one of which entered the courtyard through the main gateway and headed straight for staircase 6, while the other opened a small door, normally locked, leading to the back staircase and both began converging on flat No.