Reading Master & Margarita - 23

Chapter 23

The Great Ball at Satan's

Before the preparations for the Great Ball began, Azazello informs Woland that two strangers have appeared in the flat: a beauty who is pleading that she be allowed to stay with her lady; and her hog. It was Natasha accompanied by Nikolai Ivanovich. Natasha is permitted to be with Margarita and Nikolai Ivanovich is sent to the kitchen as he can’t enter the ball.

Margarita is advised by Woland not to be afraid of anything and drink nothing but water, he thanks her beforehand.

And when Woland said, “It’s time”, appeared Koroviev and Margarita went with him.

This chapter takes the readers to a fairy world. Bugakov’s depiction of the ball is just superb. No words can recreate Bulgakov’s magic, hence it is better to express it in his words!

The chapter can be broadly divided into 4 parts:

Margarita being readied for the ball;

Description of various halls;

The guests;

The reality mingling with the Satan’s world.

How was Margarita prepared for the Great Ball: Well, Margarita just doesn’t remember anything, it was Hella, Natasha and Begemoth who were preparing her for the event.

Margarita dimly perceived her surroundings.

Candles and a jewelled pool remained in her memory. As she stood in the bottom of this pool, Hella, with the assistance of Natasha, doused her with some hot, thick and red liquid. Margarita felt a salty taste on her lips and realized that she was being washed in blood. The bloody mantle was changed for another - thick, transparent, pinkish - and Margarita's head began to spin from rose oil. Then Margarita was laid on a crystal couch and rubbed with some big green leaves until she shone.

Here the cat burst in and started to help. He squatted down at Margarita's feet and began rubbing up her soles with the air of someone shining shoes in the street.

Margarita does not remember who stitched slippers for her from pale rose petals or how these slippers got fastened by themselves with golden clasps. Some force snatched Margarita up and put her before a mirror, and a royal diamond crown gleamed in her hair. Koroviev appeared from somewhere and hung a heavy, oval-framed picture of a black poodle by a heavy chain on Margarita's breast. This adornment was extremely burdensome to the queen. The chain at once began to chafe her neck, the picture pulled her down. But something compensated Margarita for the inconveniences that the chain with the black poodle caused her, and this was the deference with which Koroviev and Behemoth began to treat her.

After this, Margarita is given some tips for the Great Ball:

‘Allow me, Queen, to give you a last piece of advice.

Among the guests there will be different sorts, oh, very different, but no one, Queen Margot, should be shown any preference! Even if you don't like someone ... I understand that you will not, of course, show it on your face - no, no, it's unthinkable! He'll notice it, he'll notice it instantly! You must love him, love him, Queen! The mistress of the ball will be rewarded a hundredfold for that. And also - don't ignore anyone! At least a little smile, if there's no time to drop a word, at least a tiny turn of the head! Anything you like, but not inattention, they'll sicken from that ...'

Then Margarita proceeds towards the Hall. Just see, what a breathtaking description of the various halls!

…Margarita, accompanied by Koroviev and Behemoth, stepped out of the room with the pool into total darkness.

'I, I,' whispered the cat, 'I give the signal!'

'Go ahead!' Koroviev replied from the darkness.

‘The ball!!!' shrieked the cat piercingly, and just then Margarita cried out and shut her eyes for a few seconds. The ball fell on her all at once in the form of light, and, with it, of sound and smell.

Taken under the arm by Koroviev, Margarita saw herself in a tropical forest. Red-breasted, green-tailed parrots fluttered from liana to liana and cried out deafeningly: 'Delighted!' But the forest soon ended, and its bathhouse stuffiness changed at once to the coolness of a ballroom with columns of some yellowish, sparkling stone. This ballroom, just like the forest, was completely empty, except for some naked Negroes with silver bands on their heads who were standing by the

columns. Their faces turned a dirty brown from excitement when Margarita flew into the ballroom with her retinue, in which Azazello showed up from somewhere.

Here Koroviev let go of Margarita's arm and whispered:

'Straight to the tulips.'

A low wall of white tulips had grown up in front of Margarita, and beyond it she saw

numberless lamps under little shades and behind them the white chests and black shoulders of tailcoaters. Then Margarita understood where the sound of the ball was coming from. The roar of trumpets crashed down on her, and the soaring of violins that burst from under it doused her body as if with blood. The orchestra of about a hundred and fifty men was playing a polonaise.

Finally they flew out on to the landing where, as Margarita realized, she had been met in the dark by Koroviev with his little lamp. Now on this landing the light pouring from clusters of crystal grapes blinded the eye.

Margarita was put in place, and under her left arm she found a low amethyst column.

'You may rest your arm on it if it becomes too difficult,' Koroviev whispered.

Some black man threw a pillow under Margarita's feet embroidered with a golden poodle, and she, obedient to someone's hands, bent her right leg at the knee and placed her foot on it.

Then the guests start coming. See, how and from where do they come:

‘…something suddenly crashed downstairs in the huge fireplace, and from it leaped a gallows with some half-decayed remains dangling from it. The remains fell from the rope, struck the floor, and from it leaped a handsome dark-haired man in a tailcoat and patent leather shoes. A half-rotten little coffin ran out of the fireplace, its lid fell off, and another remains tumbled out of it. The handsome man gallantly leaped over to it and offered it his bent arm. The second remains put itself together into a fidgety woman in black shoes, with black feathers on her head, and then the man and the woman both hastened up the stairs.

Margarita, accompanied by Azazello and Koroviev was smiling and saying that she was delighted to see them.

Who were the guests? They were all famous/infamous individuals of their times. There were famous musicians, murderers, alchemists, brothel owners….

Bulgakov has included some known faces from his times in the list of guests, the Party members who had eliminated each other; there is also a character from his play ‘Zoya’s Apartment’ .

Out of the guests, one face remained in Margarita’s mind.

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

She was Frieda, 'She adored balls, and kept dreaming of complaining about her handkerchief.'

'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.'

The blue-bordered handkerchief represents the Russian peasantry and Frieda’s case represents the sexual exploitation that the woman was subjected to in pre-revolutionary Russia.

Towards the end appears Woland. His appearance is also very dramatic. It is here that the reality mingles with the satanic world, Baron Meigel’s fate is decided, Berlioz finally completely disappears. Let’s have a look:

 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 upon 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 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.

"Mikhail Alexandrovich,' Woland addressed the head in a low voice, and then the slain man's eyelids rose, and on the dead face Margarita saw, with a shudder, living eyes filled with thought and suffering.

'Everything came to pass, did it not?' Woland went on, looking into the head's eyes. "The head was cut off by a woman, the meeting did not take place, and I am living in your apartment. That is a fact. And fact is the most stubborn thing in the world. But we are now interested in what follows, and not in this already accomplished fact. You have always been an ardent preacher of the theory that, on the cutting off of his head, life ceases in a man, he turns to ashes and goes into non-being. I have the pleasure of informing you, in the presence of my guests, though they serve as proof of quite a different theory, that your theory is both solid and clever.

However, one theory is as good as another. There is also one which holds that it will be given to each according to his faith. Let it come true! You go into non-being, and from the cup into which you are to be transformed, I will joyfully drink to being!'

Woland raised his sword. Straight away the flesh of the head turned dark and shrivelled, then fell off in pieces, the eyes disappeared, and soon Margarita saw on the platter a yellowish skull with emerald eyes, pearl teeth and a golden foot. The lid opened on a hinge.

`Right this second, Messire,' said Koroviev, noticing Woland's questioning look, 'he'll appear before you. In this sepulchral silence I can hear the creaking of his patent leather shoes and the clink of the goblet he has just set down on the table, having drunk champagne for the last time in his life. Here he is.'

A solitary new guest was entering the room, heading towards Woland.

Outwardly he did not differ in any way from the numerous other male guests, except for one thing: this guest was literally reeling with agitation, which could be seen even from afar. Flushed spots burned on his cheeks, and his eyes darted about in total alarm. The guest was dumbstruck, and that was perfectly natural: he was astounded by everything, and above all, of course, by Woland's attire.

However, the guest was met with the utmost kindness.

'Ah, my dearest Baron Meigel,' Woland, smiling affably, addressed the guest, whose eyes were popping out of his head. `I'm happy to commend to you,' Woland turned to the other guests, 'the most esteemed Baron Meigel, an employee of the Spectacles Commission, in charge of acquainting foreigners with places of interest in the capital.'

Here Margarita froze, because she recognized this Meigel. She had come across him several times in Moscow theatres and restaurants. 'Excuse me ...' thought Margarita, 'but that means - what - that he's also dead? ...'

But the matter straight away clarified itself.

'The dear baron,' Woland went on, smiling joyfully, 'was so charming that, having learned of my arrival in Moscow, he rang me up at once, offering his services along the line of his expertise, that is, acquainting people with places of interest. It goes without saying that I was happy to invite him here.'

Just then Margarita saw Azazello hand the platter with the skull to Koroviev.

'Ah, yes, incidentally, Baron,' Woland said, suddenly lowering his voice intimately, 'rumours have spread about your extreme curiosity. They say that, combined with your no less developed talkativeness, it was beginning to attract general attention. What's more, wicked tongues have already dropped the word - a stool-pigeon and a spy. And, what's still more, it is hinted that this will bring you to a sorry end in no more than a month. And so, in order to deliver you from this painful anticipation, we have decided to come to your aid, taking advantage of the fact that you invited yourself here precisely with the purpose of eavesdropping and spying out whatever you can.'

The baron turned paler than Abaddon, who was exceptionally pale by nature, and then something strange took place. Abaddon stood in front of the baron and took off his glasses for a second. At the same moment something flashed fire in Azazello's hand, something clapped softly, the baron began to fall backwards, crimson blood spurted from his chest and poured down his starched shirt and waistcoat. Koroviev put the cup to the spurt and handed the full cup to Woland.

The baron's lifeless body was by that time already on the floor.

'I drink your health, ladies and gentlemen,' Woland said quietly and, raising the cup, touched it to his lips.

Then a metamorphosis occurred. The patched shirt and worn slippers disappeared. Woland was in some sort of black chlamys with a steel sword on his hip. He quickly approached Margarita, offered her the cup, and said imperiously:

'Drink!'

Margarita became dizzy, she swayed, but the cup was already at her lips, and voices, she could not make out whose, whispered in both her ears:

'Don't be afraid, Queen ... don't be afraid, Queen, the blood has long since gone into the earth. And where it was spilled, grapevines are already growing.'

Margarita, without opening her eyes, took a gulp, and a sweet current ran through her veins, a ringing began in her ears. It seemed to her that cocks were crowing deafeningly, that somewhere a march was being played. The crowds of guests began to lose their shape: tailcoaters and women fell to dust. Decay enveloped the room before Margarita's eyes; a sepulchral smell flowed over it.

The columns fell apart, the fires went out, everything shrank, there were no more fountains, no camellias, no tulips. And there was simply this: the modest living room of the jeweller's widow, and a strip of light falling from a slightly opened door.

And Margarita went through this slightly opened door, comes back to the real world.