Reading Master & Margarita 20

Chapter 20

Azazello's Cream

It is Friday, and Margarita was looking impatiently at the clock. As soon as it was 9.30 pm, she opened the little box and looked at the yellowish cream. Then she took out some cream from the box and started rubbing it into her forehead and cheeks.

The cream spread easily and, as it seemed to Margarita, evaporated at once. Having rubbed several times, Margarita glanced into the mirror and dropped the box right on her watch crystal, which became covered with cracks. Margarita closed her eyes, then glanced once again and burst into stormy laughter.

Her eyebrows, plucked to a thread with tweezers, thickened and lay in even black arches over her greening eyes. The thin vertical crease cutting the bridge of her nose, which had appeared back then, in October, when the master vanished, disappeared without a trace. So did the yellowish shadows at her temples and the two barely noticeable little webs of wrinkles at the outer corners of her eyes. The skin of her cheeks filled out with an even pink colour, her forehead became white and clear, and the hairdresser's waves in her hair came undone.

From the mirror a naturally curly, black-haired woman of about twenty was looking at the thirty-year-old Margarita, baring her teeth and shaking with laughter.

Having laughed her fill, Margarita jumped out of her bathrobe with a single leap, dipped freely into the light, rich cream, and with vigorous strokes began rubbing it into the skin of her body. It at once turned pink and tingly. That instant, as if a needle had been snatched from her brain, the ache she had felt in her temple all evening after the meeting in the Alexandrovsky Garden subsided, her leg and arm muscles grew stronger, and then Margarita's body became weightless.

She sprang up and hung in the air just above the rug, then was slowly pulled down and descended.

'What a cream! What a cream!' cried Margarita, throwing herself into an armchair.

The rubbings changed her not only externally. Now joy was boiling up in her, in all of her, in every particle of her body, which felt to her like bubbles prickling her body all over. Margarita felt herself free, free of everything. Besides, she understood with perfect clarity that what was happening was precisely what her presentiment had been telling her in the morning, and that she was leaving her house and her former life forever.

She writes a small note to her husband asking him to forget and forgive her.

We come across two more characters in this chapter. Margarita’s servant, Natasha and Nikolai Ivanovich, who stayed in the ground floor apartment of her building.

We can see that Margarita treats Natasha as a human being: she is friendly and kind to her:

With a completely unburdened soul, Margarita came flying into the bedroom, and after her ran Natasha, loaded down with things. At once all these things - a wooden hanger with a dress, lace shawls, dark blue satin shoes on shoe-trees and a belt - all of it spilled on the floor, and Natasha clasped her freed hands.

'What, nice?' Margarita Nikolaevna cried loudly in a hoarse voice.

'How can it be?' Natasha whispered, backing away. 'How did you do it, Margarita Nikolaevna.'

'It's the cream! The cream, the cream!' answered Margarita, pointing to the glittering golden box and turning around in front of the mirror.

Natasha, forgetting the wrinkled dress lying on the floor, ran up to the pier-glass and fixed her greedy, lit-up eyes on the remainder of the cream. Her lips were whispering something. She again turned to Margarita and said with a sort of awe:

'And, oh, the skin! The skin! Margarita Nikolaevna, your skin is glowing!' But she came to her senses, ran to the dress, picked it up and began shaking it out.

'Leave it! Leave it!' Margarita shouted to her. 'Devil take it! Leave it all! Or, no, keep it as a souvenir. As a souvenir, I tell you. Take everything in the room!'

As if half-witted, the motionless Natasha looked at Margarita for some time, then hung on her neck, kissing her and crying out:

'Satin! Glowing! Satin! And the eyebrows, the eyebrows!'

`Take all these rags, take the perfume, drag it to your trunk, hide it,' cried Margarita, 'but don't take any valuables, they'll accuse you of stealing.'

Natasha grabbed and bundled up whatever came to her hand - dresses, shoes, stockings, underwear - and ran out of the bedroom.

But Nikolai Ivanovich seems boring to her. She mocks at him. Nikolai Ivanovich too seems to be an influential officer, because every morning the official car takes him to the office and drops back home in the evening.

Azazello calls her at 10 pm and instructs how to fly. She is ready to fly!

Suddenly a sweeping broom with its brush up enters the room. Margarita climbs on the broom and flies out of her apartment…..ready to enjoy her newfound freedom…looking forward to meeting her love.

We shall be with Margarita…