Reading Master&Margarita 13

Chapter 13

The Hero Enters

Hello! Were you thinking that Ivan Bezdomnyi is the protagonist of the novel? Then you are in for a big surprise!

Chapter 13 tells about the hero – THE HERO APPEARS – and how does he appear? In room No. 117 of Stravinsky’s clinic where Ivan is put up….in the evening when the transformation is taking place in Ivan’s thinking, when it is getting dark, when Ivan is drowsing, when he sees the huge cat passing by in his dream, there appears a mysterious figure and in a threatening way asks Ivan to keep quite.

Ivan is not scared. He sees a clean shaven man with dark hair, sharp nose, with excitement in his eyes peeping into the room. He was about 38 years; a lock of hair had come over his forehead.

You must have guessed that this is Gogol’s portrait. Age mentioned is that of Bulgakov at that point of time (b. 1991). You must have recollected that Nikolai Gogol too was undergoing psychic treatment…after the Dead Souls he was so harassed by authorities that he had to be sent to the psychiatric clinic. Nikolai Gogol was Bulgakov’s favourite writer and hence we can say that it is a way of paying tribute to him, by showing how the talented writers suffered.

Actually the plot of chapter could be divided into three parts:

1.   comments on the contemporary literary situation;

2.   life sketch of the hero; and

3.   Harassment of talented writers in the Soviet society.

We shall take each of these aspects.

 So, when the stranger enters room No. 117 he explains to Ivan how he managed to steal Praskovya Fyodorovna’s bunch of keys, and how he is able to visit his neighbor. In spite of possessing keys to the balcony, he doesn’t want to run away from this place as he has nowhere to go. And then the conversation begins. The stranger asks Ivan whether he is aggressive, and when Ivan answers that he had smashed the ‘mug’ of a person in the restaurant, the guest warns him that this will not be tolerated…but his objection is to the word ‘mug’. He emphasizes that a person has a ‘face’ and not a ‘mug’. Bulgakov is criticizing the lexis of formalists, particularly that of futurists and specifically that of Mayakovsky who has used such words in plenty in his poems.

And when Ivan tells him that he is a poet, the guest gets nervous. Obviously he is not comfortable with writers, poets, critics…and Ivan’s name – Bezdomnyi, which is as per the fashion of those days too displeases him.

When Ivan asks the stranger whether he likes his poems, the stranger answers that he does not like them. To Ivan’s question, “which of my poems have you read?” he says, “Not a single. But tell me aren’t they all similar to the poems of others?” Here, we notice that he is talking about the propaganda literature, which, as if comes out from a mould….

And then Ivan promises that he will stop writing.

When the guest is told that Ivan has come here because of Pontius Pilate, the guest gets too eager to know the whole episode that took place at the Patriarchy Ponds. Ivan is told that that he had actually met Satan at the Patriarchy Park.

The stranger tells Ivan that he too has landed in Stravinsky’s clinic because of Pontius Pilate and then narrates his story to Ivan……

His story is not like any other common story.

He says that after graduating in history, he worked for two years in a museum. There he was given a lottery ticket, and this lottery ticket won for him a prize of 100,000 rubles. It was a big amount and the first thing he did was to leave the job at the museum, leave his pigeon-hole like room on the Myasnitskayaa Street and rented a house in Arbat.

This was a cozy and beautiful house, a front room with a basin; a small room with window in the garden and a big hall. There was always fire in the stove; there was warmth in the house.

He bought many many books and started writing this novel about Pontius Pilate and Yeshua-Ha-Nostri…(the same which begins with Pilate entering the balcony of Hirod’s palace in a white cloak with blood red lining…). The novel was moving fast, Pilate was moving towards the end…the winter had receded; came spring and the linden and lily wore green attire.

The writer (he does not disclose his name in the novel) has abandoned his name and surname like all other things in life….now he is only MASTER and the identifying feature of his persona is the black cap with a yellow ‘M’ embroidered on it by HER. This name – MASTER – too was given to him by her.

HER name is also not mentioned in this chapter. Master met her during one of his evening walks on Tverskaya. This was an event more important for him than winning 100,000 rubles in lottery.

She was carrying yellow flowers in her hands. Master disliked this colour, but still started walking along with her on the other side of the road. Suddenly she turned into a lane and looked at him.

He started following her. Suddenly she stopped and asked him whether he liked her flowers. He answered in the negative and she threw them into the canal. They were walking silently, she held his hand into hers and they kept walking…reached the Kremlin Wall on the river side, promised to meet next day and parted.

Soon she became his secret wife. But Master was sure that nobody did come to know anything about her.

She was married; he too had left his wife…

She would come daily to his house, would prepare breakfast; would clean dust off piles of his books; would read pages written by him and comment that this novel is very precious to her. In her free time she would embroider this cap for him.

The novel was complete. It was typed and he came out of his cozy abode to give it to a publisher and that was the end of his happiness!

Bulgakov draws a very ugly picture of the publishing world.

The publishers would ask him about his early experience, about his family and finally would enquire who on earth inspired him to write on such a forbidden topic.

They would not say openly that the novel can’t be published; but would ask him to come again and again under some pretext or other. Finally he was informed that the publishing house has material enough for the next two years and they can’t take it up.

Some other publisher published a big extract of the novel and there was furor and scandal in the literary world which finally destroyed the MASTER.

This is how it happened…

Soon after the publication of this big extract from the novel, there started a chain of articles in various newspapers – all of them were criticizing the author who dared to justify the Christ.

Every day there were articles in the newspapers; they were becoming more and more horrible, caustic…(If you remember the history around Boris Pasternak’s ‘Dr. Zhivago’, you will quickly understand this).

Initially Master would laugh at them, ignore them; but then he started getting surprised. He could guess that the writers of these articles were not saying what they want to say. They were becoming more and more sharp, the style of these articles was getting more and more threatening…Master is condemned by one and all.

The third stage was that of fear. He was scared of everything. He was scared of darkness. He had a feeling that an octopus is crawling towards him and trying to catch him by his tentacles. In other words he was becoming a mental patient.

His beloved too was very sad. She would curse herself saying that it was she who had pushed him into this situation. Had she not insisted on getting a part of the novel published in a magazine, things wouldn’t have come to this stage.

And under such state of depression Master burns his novel into the big stove…suddenly she comes unexpectedly at night and tries to save the still unburnt pages of the novel. She tells him that she would come to stay with him forever in the morning after informing her husband, who has never caused any unhappiness to her.

This happened in mid-October. After she left, there was a knock at the door and thereafter whatever Master told Ivan does not reach the readers. He was talking into Ivan’s ear…trembling with fear, eyes filled with horror…

And in mid-January he found himself again in the courtyard of his house, in the same coat, with no buttons now on it, freezing with cold.

Where was he between October and mid-January? Why his condition had become so miserable? We can only guess!!!!

Someone had occupied his house. He was scared by a dog which had come in front of him; he decided to end his life and came walking up to the metro line. But the same fear prevented him from committing suicide….a truck driver took pity on him and brought him to Stravinsky’s clinic

Here his frozen fingers were healed and he is given proper medication.

Master says that he is in the clinic for the last four months and does not feel bad about it.

When Ivan asks Master why he didn’t inform her about his whereabouts, Master answers that he doesn’t want to cause her mental agony by telling that he is in Stravinsky’s clinic and is being cured for psychiatric ailment.

He shudders at the memory of his novel…

When Ivan requests him to tell more about Pontius Pilate and Yeshua-Ha-Nostri, Master says that only he, who met him at the Patriarchy would be able to tell properly.

While they were talking, twice there was commotion in the corridor…Master tells Ivan that in room No. 119, they have brought someone who is muttering about currency notes in the ventilator; and in room No. 120, has arrived a person who is pleading that his head be returned back to him.

It was past midnight that Master left Ivan.

Thursday is over…but we still don’t know what else happened in the night!

The parting comment by Master was, one should never make big plans. I wanted to see the world, but I ended up being here. This part of the world is not bad, but it is definitely not the best.

In fact, Bulgakov was trying to go out of the Soviet Union, but he was not being permitted to leave the country and he had to remain in the Soviet Union forever.