The Master and Margarita

The present translation has been made from the text of the original magazine publication, based on Elena Sergeevna’s 1963 typescript, with all cuts restored as in the Possev and YMCA-Press editions. It is complete and unabridged.

The translators wish to express their gratitude to M. O. Chudakova for her advice on the text and to Irina Kronrod for her help in preparing the Further Reading.

R. P., L. V.

Further Reading

WORKS OF MIKHAIL BULGAKOV IN RUSSIAN

Bulgakov, M. A., Sobraniye sochinenii v pyati tomakh, Khudozhestvennaya

Literatura, Moscow, 1989-90 (collected works in five volumes.)

WORKS ON MIKHAIL BULGAKOV AND THE MASTER

AND MARGARITA

In Russian

Bulgakova, E. S., Dnevnik, Moscow, 1990 (diaries of Bulgakov’s third wife)

Chudakova, M. O., Zhizneopisanie Mikhaila Bulgakova, Moscow, 1988

Gasparov, Boris, Iz nabliudenii nad motivnoi strukturoi romana M. A Bulgakova ‘Master i Margarita’, Riga, 1989

Kreps, Mikhail, Bulgakov i Pasternak kak romanisty, Ann Arbor, 1984

Vospominaniya o Mikhaile Bulgakove, Moscow, 1988 (memoirs by various hands)

Yanovskaya, L., Tvorcheskiy put’ Mikhaila Bulgakova, Moscow, 1983

In English

Barratt, Andrew, Between Two Worlds. A Critical Introduction to ‘The Master and Margarita’, Oxford, 1987

Curtis, Julie A., Bulgakov’s Last Decade: The Writer as Hero, Cambridge, 1987

— Manuscripts Don’t Burn: Mikhail Bulgakov, a Life in Letters and Diaries, Woodstock, NY, 1992

Milne, Lesley, The Master and Margarita: A Comedy of Victory, Birmingham, 1977

— Mikhail Bulgakov: A Critical Biography, Cambridge and New York, 1990

Proffer, Ellendea, Bulgakov: Life and Work, Ann Arbor, 1984

Wright, A. Colin, Mikhail Bulgakov: Life and Interpretations, Toronto, Buffalo and London, 1978

In French

Gourg, M., Mikhail Boulgakov 1891-1940. Un maître et son destin, Paris, 1992

‘... who are you, then?’

‘I am part of that power which eternally wills evil and eternally works good.’

Goethe, Faust¹

BOOK ONE

CHAPTER 1

Never Talk with Strangers

At the hour of the hot spring sunset two citizens appeared at the Patriarch’s Ponds.¹ One of them, approximately forty years old, dressed in a grey summer suit, was short, dark-haired, plump, bald, and carried his respectable fedora hat in his hand. His neatly shaven face was adorned with black horn-rimmed glasses of a supernatural size. The other, a broad-shouldered young man with tousled reddish hair, his checkered cap cocked back on his head, was wearing a cowboy shirt, wrinkled white trousers and black sneakers.

The first was none other than Mikhail Alexandrovich Berlioz,² editor of a fat literary journal and chairman of the board of one of the major Moscow literary associations, called Massolit³ for short, and his young companion was the poet Ivan Nikolaevich Ponyrev, who wrote under the pseudonym of Homeless.⁴

Once in the shade of the barely greening lindens, the writers dashed first thing to a brightly painted stand with the sign: ‘Beer and Soft Drinks.’

Ah, yes, note must be made of the first oddity of this dreadful May evening. There was not a single person to be seen, not only by the stand, but also along the whole walk parallel to Malaya Bronnaya Street. At that hour when it seemed no longer possible to breathe, when the sun, having scorched Moscow, was collapsing in a dry haze somewhere beyond Sadovoye Ring, no one came under the lindens, no one sat on a bench, the walk was empty.

‘Give us seltzer,’ Berlioz asked.

‘There is no seltzer,’ the woman in the stand said, and for some reason became offended.

‘Is there beer?’ Homeless inquired in a rasping voice.

‘Beer’ll be delivered towards evening,’ the woman replied.

‘Then what is there?’ asked Berlioz.

‘Apricot soda, only warm,’ said the woman.

‘Well, let’s have it, let’s have it! ...’

The soda produced an abundance of yellow foam, and the air began to smell of a barber-shop. Having finished drinking, the writers immediately started to hiccup, paid, and sat down on a bench face to the pond and back to Bronnaya.

Here the second oddity occurred, touching Berlioz alone. He suddenly stopped hiccuping, his heart gave a thump and dropped away somewhere for an instant, then came back, but with a blunt needle lodged in it. Besides that, Berlioz was gripped by fear, groundless, yet so strong that he wanted to flee the Ponds at once without looking back.