The Master and Margarita (42 page)

“But what’s that on her foot?” asked Margarita, tirelessly offering her hand to the guests who came ahead of the hobbling Madame Tofana. “And why that green band? A withered neck?”

“Delighted, Prince!” cried Koroviev, and at the same time whispered to Margarita: “A beautiful neck, but an unpleasantness happened to her in prison. What she has on her foot. Queen, is a Spanish boot,[123] and the band is explained this way: when the prison guards learned that some five hundred ill-chosen husbands had departed Naples and Palermo for ever, in the heat of the moment they strangled Madame Tofana in prison.”

“How happy I am, 0 kindest Queen, that the high honour has fallen to me...” Tofana whispered nunnishly, trying to lower herself to one knee – the Spanish boot hindered her. Koroviev and Behemoth helped her up.

“I’m very glad,” Margarita answered her, at the same time offering her hand to others.

Now a steady stream was coming up the stairs from below. Margarita could no longer see what was going on in the front hall. She mechanically raised and lowered her hand and smiled uniformly to the guests. There was a hum in the air on the landing; from the ballrooms Margarita had left, music could be heard, like the sea.

“But this one is a boring woman,” Koroviev no longer whispered, but spoke aloud, knowing that in the hubbub of voices no one would hear him.

“She adores balls, and keeps dreaming of complaining about her handkerchief.”

Margarita’s glance picked out among those coming up the woman at whom Koroviev was pointing. She was young, about twenty, of remarkably beautiful figure, but with somehow restless and importunate eyes.

“What handkerchief?” asked Margarita.

“She has a chambermaid assigned to her,” explained Koroviev, “who for thirty years has been putting a handkerchief on her night table during the night. She wakes up and the handkerchief is there. She’s tried burning it in the stove and drowning it in the river, but nothing helps.”

“What handkerchief?” whispered Margarita, raising and lowering her arm.

“A blue-bordered one. The thing is that when she worked in a cafe, the owner once invited her to the pantry, and nine months later she gave birth to a boy, took him to the forest, stuffed the handkerchief into his mouth, and then buried the boy in the ground. At the trial she said she had no way of feeding the child.”

“And where is the owner of the cafe?” asked Margarita. “Queen,” the cat suddenly creaked from below, “what, may I ask, does the owner have to do with it? It wasn’t he who smothered the infant in the forest!”

Margarita, without ceasing to smile and proffer her right hand, dug the sharp nails of the left into Behemoth’s ear and whispered to him: “If you, scum, allow yourself to interfere in the conversation again...”

Behemoth squeaked in a not very ball-like fashion and rasped: “Queen ... the ear will get swollen ... why spoil the ball with a swollen ear? ... I was speaking legally, from the legal point of view ... I say no more, I say no more. Consider me not a cat but a post, only let go of my ear!”

Margarita released his ear, and the importunate, gloomy eyes were before her.

“I am happy. Queen-hostess, to be invited to the great ball of the full moon!”

“And I am glad to see you,” Margarita answered her, ‘very glad. Do you like champagne?”

“What are you doing. Queen?!” Koroviev cried desperately but soundlessly in Margarita’s ear. There’ll be a traffic jam!”

“Yes, I do,” the woman said imploringly, and suddenly began repeating mechanically: “Frieda,[124] Frieda, Frieda! My name is Frieda, Queen!”

“Get drunk tonight, Frieda, and don’t think about anything,” said Margarita.

Frieda reached out both arms to Margarita, but Koroviev and Behemoth very adroitly took her under the arms and she blended into the crowd.

Now people were coming in a solid wall from below, as if storming the landing where Margarita stood. Naked women’s bodies came up between tailcoated men. Their swarthy, white, coffee-bean-coloured, and altogether black bodies floated towards Margarita. In their hair — red, black, chestnut, light as flax – precious stones glittered and danced, spraying sparkles into the flood of light. And as if someone had sprinkled the storming column of men with droplets of light, diamond studs sprayed light from their chests. Every second now Margarita felt lips touch her knee, every second she held out her hand to be kissed, her face was contracted into a fixed mask of greeting.

“I’m delighted,” Koroviev sang monotonously, “we’re delighted ... the queen is delighted ...”

The queen is delighted ...” Azazello echoed nasally behind her back.

“I’m delighted!” the cat kept exclaiming.

The marquise ...”[125] muttered Koroviev, “poisoned her father, two brothers and two sisters for the inheritance ... The queen is delighted! ... Madame Minkin ...[126] Ah, what a beauty! A bit nervous. Why bum the maid’s face with the curling-irons? Of course, in such conditions one gets stabbed ... The queen is delighted! ... Queen, one second of attention! The emperor Rudolf[127] – sorcerer and alchemist... Another alchemist – got hanged ... Ah, here she is! Ah, what a wonderful brothel she ran in Strasbourg! ... We’re delighted! ... A Moscow dressmaker,[128] we all love her for her inexhaustible fantasy ... She kept a shop and invented a terribly funny trick: drilled two round holes in the wall...”

“And the ladies didn’t know?” asked Margarita.

“Every one of them knew. Queen,” answered Koroviev. “Delighted! ...

This twenty-year-old boy was distinguished from childhood by Strange qualities, a dreamer and an eccentric. A girl fell in love with him, and he went and sold her to a brothel...”

A river came streaming from below, and there was no end to this river in sight. Its source – the enormous fireplace – continued to feed it. Thus one hour passed and a second commenced. Here Margarita began to notice that her chain had become heavier than before. Something strange also happened with her arm. Now, before raising it, Margarita had to wince. Koroviev’s interesting observations ceased to amuse Margarita. Slant-eyed Mongolian faces, white faces and black became undifferentiated to her, they merged at times, and the air between them would for some reason begin to tremble and flow. A sharp pain, as if from a needle, suddenly pierced Margarita’s right arm, and, clenching her teeth, she rested her elbow on the post. Some rustling, as if from wings against the walls, was now coming from the ballroom, and it was clear that unprecedented hordes of guests were dancing there, and it seemed to Margarita that even the massive marble, mosaic and crystal floors of this prodigious room were pulsing rhythmically.

Neither Gaius Caesar Caligula[129] nor Messalina[130] interested Margarita any longer, nor did any of the kings, dukes, cavaliers, suicides, poisoners, gallowsbirds, procuresses, prison guards and sharpers, executioners, informers, traitors, madmen, sleuths, seducers. All their names became jumbled in her head, the faces stuck together into one huge pancake, and only a single face lodged itself painfully in her memory – the face, framed in a truly fiery beard, of Maliuta Skuratov.[131]

Margarita’s legs kept giving way, she was afraid of bursting into tears at any moment. The worst suffering was caused by her right knee, which was being kissed. It became swollen, the skin turned blue, even though Natasha’s hand appeared by this knee several times with a sponge, wiping it with something fragrant. At the end of the third hour, Margarita glanced down with completely desperate eyes and gave a joyful start – the stream of guests was thinning out.

“Balls always assemble according to the same laws. Queen,” whispered Koroviev. “Presently the wave will begin to subside. I swear we’re enduring the final minutes. Here’s the group of revellers from Brocken, they always come last. Yes, here they are. Two drunken vampires ... that’s all? Ah, no, here’s one more ... no, two!”[132]

The last two guests were coming up the stairs!

“It’s some new one,” Koroviev was saying, squinting through his lens.

“Ah, yes, yes. Azazello visited him once and, over the cognac, whispered some advice to him on how to get rid of a certain man whose exposures he was extremely afraid of. And so he told an acquaintance who was dependent on him to spray the walls of the office with poison ...”

“What’s his name?” asked Margarita.

“Ah, really, I myself don’t know yet,” Koroviev replied, “we”11 have to ask Azazello.”

“And who is with him?”

“Why, that same efficient subordinate of his. Delighted!” cried Koroviev to the last two.

The stairway was empty. They waited a little longer as a precaution.

But no one else came from the fireplace.

A second later, without knowing how it happened, Margarita found herself in the same room with the pool, and there, bursting into tears at once from the pain in her arm and leg, she collapsed right on the floor. But Hella and Natasha, comforting her, again drew her under the bloody shower, again massaged her body, and Margarita revived.

"There’s more, there’s more. Queen Margot,” whispered Koroviev, appearing beside her. “You must fly around the rooms, so that the honourable guests don’t feel they’ve been abandoned.”

And once more Margarita flew out of the room with the pool. On the stage behind the tulips, where the waltz king’s orchestra had been playing, there now raged an ape jazz band. A huge gorilla with shaggy side-whiskers, a trumpet in his hand, capering heavily, was doing the conducting.

Orang-utans sat in a row blowing on shiny trumpets. Perched on their shoulders were merry chimpanzees with concertinas.

Two hamadryads with manes like lions played grand pianos, but these grand pianos were not heard amidst the thundering, squeaking and booming of saxophones, fiddles and drums in the paws of gibbons, mandrills and marmosets. On the mirror floor a countless number of couples, as if merged, amazing in the deftness and cleanness of their movements, all turning in the same direction, swept on like a wall threatening to clear away everything in its path. Live satin butterflies bobbed above the heads of the dancing hordes, flowers poured down from the ceiling. In the capitals of the columns, each time the electricity went off, myriads of fireflies lit up, and marsh-lights floated in the air.

Then Margarita found herself in a room with a pool of monstrous size bordered by a colonnade. A giant black Neptune spouted a wide pink stream from his maw. A stupefying smell of champagne rose from the pool. Here unconstrained merriment held sway. Ladies, laughing, gave their handbags to their cavaliers or the negroes who rushed about with towels in their hands, and with a cry dived swallow-like into the pool. Foamy columns shot up. The crystal bottom of the pool shone with light from below that broke through the density of the wine, and in it the silvery swimming bodies could be seen. The ladies got out of the pool completely drunk. Loud laughter resounded under the columns, booming like the jazz band.

All that was remembered from this turmoil was the completely drunken face of a woman with senseless and, even in their senselessness, imploring eyes, and only one name — Frieda — was recalled.

Margarita’s head began to spin from the smell of the wine, and she was about to leave when the cat arranged a number in the pool that detained her.

Behemoth performed some magic by Neptune’s maw, and at once the billowing mass of champagne, hissing and gurgling, left the pool, and Neptune began spewing out a stream neither glittering nor foaming but of a dark-yellow colour. The ladies — shrieking and screaming “Cognac!” — rushed from the pool-side and hid behind the columns. In a few seconds the pool was filled, and the cat, turning three times in the air, dropped into the heaving cognac. He crawled out, spluttering, his bow-tie limp, the gilding on his whiskers gone, along with the opera glasses. Only one woman dared to follow Behemoth’s example — that same frolicsome dressmaker, with her cavalier, an unknown young mulatto. The two threw themselves into the cognac, but here Koroviev took Margarita under the arm and they left the bathers.

It seemed to Margarita that she flew somewhere, where she saw mountains of oysters in huge stone basins. Then she flew over a glass floor with infernal furnaces burning under it and devilish white cooks darting among them. Then somewhere, already ceasing to comprehend anything, she saw dark cellars where some sort of lamps burned, where girls served meat sizzling on red-hot coals, where her health was drunk from big mugs. Then she saw polar bears playing concertinas and dancing the Kamarinsky[133] on a platform. A salamander-conjurer[134] who did not burn in the fireplace ... And for the second time her strength began to ebb.

“One last appearance,” Koroviev whispered to her anxiously, “and then we’re free!”

Accompanied by Koroviev, she again found herself in the ballroom, but now there was no dancing in it, and the guests in a numberless throng pressed back between the columns, leaving the middle of the room open.

Margarita did not remember who helped her to get up on the dais that appeared in the middle of this open space in the room. When she was up on it, to her own amazement, she heard a clock strike midnight somewhere, though by her reckoning it was long past. At the last stroke of the clock, which came from no one knew where, silence fell on the crowd of guests.

Then Margarita saw Woland again. He walked in surrounded by Abaddon, Azazello and several others who resembled Abaddon — dark-haired and young.

Now Margarita saw that opposite her dais another had been prepared for Woland. But he did not make use of it. What struck Margarita was that Woland came out for this last great appearance at the ball looking just the same as he had looked in the bedroom. The same dirty, patched shirt[135] hung on his shoulders, his feet were in worn-out bedroom slippers. Woland had a sword, but he used this bare sword as a cane, leaning on it.

Limping, Woland stopped at his dais, and immediately Azazello was before him with a platter in his hands, and on this platter Margarita saw a man’s severed head with the front teeth knocked out. Total silence continued to reign, broken only once by the far-off sound, inexplicable under the circumstances, of a doorbell, coming as if from the front hall.