Mikhail Afanasievich Bulgakov
The Master and Margarita
PART FOUR
Shhhh...
May I sit down?
How did you get here?
Aren't the balcony grilles locked?
A month ago I stole a bunch of keys...
...and so I occasionally call on a neighbor.
If you can get to the balcony, you can escape. Or is it too high?
No, I cannot escape from here, not because it's too high...
...but because I have nowhere to escape to.
So, shall we sit?
We sit...
Here, citizens, you and I have just beheld a case of so-called ...
...mass hypnosis.
A purely scientific experiment, proving...
...that there are no miracles in magic.
Let us ask Maestro Woland,
...to expose this experiment for us.
Presently, citizens, you will see these supposed banknotes...
...disappear as suddenly as they appeared.
And this is a case of so-called lying!
The notes, citizens...
...are genuine!
This one, incidentally, annoys me...
Keeps poking his nose where nobody's asked him...
...spoils the séance with false observations!
What're we going to do with him?
Tear his head off!
Tear his head off?
There's an idea!
Behemoth!
Go to it!
- Eins...
- Zwei...
- Drei!
A doctor!
Don't torture him!
For God's sake, don't torture him!
So, what then, citizens...
...shall we forgive him?
Forgive him, forgive him!
What are your orders, Messire?
Well, now...
they're people like any other people...
They love money...
...but that has always been so!
...they're light-minded well, what of it...
...mercy sometimes knocks at their hearts...
...ordinary people...
...In general...
...reminiscent of the former ones...
...only the housing problem...
...has corrupted them...
...interesting...
...wonder if old problems still survive...
Put the head on.
Alive?
Buzz off!
It's more fun without you!
Tell me please...
...you're not violent, I hope?
Because, you know, I cannot stand noise, turmoil, force...
...or other things like that...
Yesterday in a restaurant I socked one type in the mug!
Your grounds?
No grounds, I must confess...
Outrageous!
And besides, what a way to express yourself...
...socked in the mug!
It is not known precisely whether a man has...
...a mug or a face.
And, after all...
...it may well be a face.
No, you should give that up, and for good.
Your profession?
Poet!
Ah, just my luck!
And what is your name?
Homeless.
What, you mean you dislike my poetry?
I dislike it terribly...
And what have you read?
I've never read any of your poetry!
Then how can you say that?
As if I haven't read others?
...Or else maybe there's some miracle...
Very well...
...I'm ready to take it on faith.
...Is your poetry good...or not?
...You tell me yourself.
Monstrous...
Don't write any more...
I promise!
...and I swear...
All righty, now that we've kicked that nuisance сonferencier out...
...let's open a ladies' shop!
Latest fashion in dresses for the ladies...
Shoes...
Hats...
Lingerie...
Spring-summer of '35...
Paris...
Rome...
Berlin...
Guerlain...
Chanel nr 5...
Mitsuko...
Narcisse Noir...
...evening gowns...
...cocktail dresses...
Please take it Madame...
Welcome to the store ladies!
Our firm...
...is offering perfectly gratis...
...an exchange of the ladies' old dresses...
...for Parisian models and Parisian shoes!
The same held, for the handbags and perfumes etc and so on...
Welcome!
With no embarrassment or ceremony!
Well!...
Completely gratis!
Welcome!
Welcome to the store...Madame!
Maestro!
...Strauss waltz!
...in B flat major
"Voices of Spring"
...to the right please to the left please...
My wife is ill and sent me...
Can you prove it?
Passport!
Thank you comrade!
Completely gratis!
So, how did you wind up here?
On account of Pontius Pilate!
What?
A staggering coincidence!
I beg you...
Tell me about it, I beg you!
Good bye...good bye...
That's all...
to the lateness of the hour, the shop is closed!
All the same it is desirable, citizen artiste...
...that you expose the technique of your tricks to the spectators without delay
...especially the trick with the paper money.
The mass of spectators demands an explanation!
The mass of spectators, doesn't seem to be saying anything
But, in consideration of your most esteemed desire...
...of the chairman of the Acoustics Commission...
Arkady Apollonovich Sempleyarov...
...so be it - I will perform an exposure.
Allow me to ask, where were you last evening at seven?
Last evening Arkady Apollonovich was at a meeting of the Acoustics Commission...
...but I don't understand what that has got to do with magic.
Oui, Madame! Naturally you don't understand. ...
After driving off to the said meeting...
...which incidentally was not even scheduled for last night!
...Arkady Apollonovich went to Yelokhovskaya Street...
to visit an actress from the regional itinerant theatre...
...Militsa Andreevna Pokobatko!
...with whom he spent some four hours.
But...
It's all clear...
...Now I see...
...why that giftless thing got the role of Louisa!
Here, honorable citizens, is a typical case...
...of the exposure !
...Arkady Apollonovich so importunately insisted on!
The séance is over!
Maestro!
Hack out a march!
'And so, I wound up here!
Unlucky poet!
You oughtn't to have behaved so casually and even impertinently with him.
...So you've paid for it...
And you must still say thank you that you got off comparatively cheaply.
But who is he, finally?
Yesterday at the Patriarch's Ponds...
...you met Satan!
My God!
Oh my God, My God...
Come over!... it's interesting...
So I thought, so I thought...
I'll call...
...to NKVD!
Don't call anywhere, Rimsky...
...it'll be bad...
God...
...you frightened me...
Excuse me, please, I thought you had already left.
Why didn't you call?
What are all these shenanigans about Yalta?
Well, it's as I was saying, He was found in the tavern in Pushkino.
He got a telegrapher drunk in Pushkino...
...and the two of them started acting up...
...sending telegrams marked "Yalta", among other things
Then where is he now?
Well, where else could he be?
In a sobering-up cell, naturally.
And what they were doing...
...dancing in the arms of the telegrapher...
...in front of the post office...
...chasing after some female citizens...
...fought with the barman in the Yalta itself
...Scattering green onions all over the floor of the same Yalta
Smashing eight bottles of dry white Ai-Danil.
...Broke the meter in a taxi cab...
He was so out of it, he resisted those...
...who came for him...
In short, black horror!
What's that on your face?
The car skidded, I bumped against the door-handle!
You're lying!
He casts no shadow!
He's guessed, damn him!
Always was clever...
He's here!
Come here...
Help me!
No...
I won't!
Come here! Come to me!
I don't want to!
What did you find out?
Practically nothing!
One of them said that the man was short...
...had gold teeth, and limped on his right leg.
The other that the man was enormously tall, had platinum crowns...
...and limped on his left leg...
And this citizen insists...
...that the man had no distinguishing marks.
Anything else?
Wanted magician...
...did not registered anywhere on arrival...
...had not shown anyone his passport...
...or any other papers...
...contracts, or agreements...
...and no one had heard anything about him!
So no one...
Don't leave a stone unturned...
...collect evidence...
...pick up anyone even remotely associated with the case...
...investigation in this case that seems
a political devil-knows-what...
... mixed with some kind of hypnotic tricks...
and surely being a criminal one ,
...should be tied up in two days!
Go to it!
As ordered!
Oh...and use this Baron...
... Meigel!
As ordered!
As soon as you started describing him, I began to realize...
...who it was that you had the pleasure of talking with yesterday!
One can't fail to recognize him, my friend!
Though you... again I must apologize, but I'm not mistaken...
...you are not an educated man?
I went to sanatorium a lot...
...in Yalta!
Well, so, so... hardly surprising...
But Berlioz, astounds me...
...Though I must say in his defense...
that Woland is, capable of pulling the wool over the eyes of an even shrewder man...
What?!
I see...
...I see.
He had the letter "W" on his visiting card.
Ai-yai-yai, what a thing!
So that means he might actually have been at Pontius Pilate's...
He was already born then!
And they call me a madman!
Your interlocutor was at Pilate's...
...and had breakfast with Kant...
...and now he's visiting Moscow.
But he'll be up to devil knows what here!
We ought to catch him somehow!
You've already tried...
I don't advise others to try either!
And as for being up to something, rest assured, he will be.
Ah, ah! But how annoying that it was you who met him and not I...
Though it's all burned up...
...for that meeting I'd give back...
...all of the keys, for I have nothing else to give.
I'm destitute.
But what do you need him for?
You see, it's such a strange story...
...I'm sitting here for the same reason you are...
...on account of Pontius Pilate.
The thing is that...
...a year ago I wrote...
...a novel about Pontius Pilate.
You're a writer?
I am a master!
She sewed it for me with her own hands...
And what is your name?
I no longer have a name...
I renounced it, as I generally did everything in life...
Then at least tell me about the novel...
If you please, sir...
My life, it must be said, has taken a not very ordinary course...
...I'm a historian by education...
...I had worked until two years ago at one of the Moscow museums...
...besides that, I had also done translations.
From what language?
I know five languages besides Russian...
...English, French, German, Latin and Greek...
Well, I can also read Italian a little.
Oh, my!
...I was alone in Moscow...
...I had no acquaintances...
...And, just imagine, one day...
...I won a hundred thousand rubles.
I got the ticket at the museum...
Having won a hundred thousand rubles...
...here's what I did:
...I bought books...
...I gave up my room on Myasnitskaya...
Ohh, that accursed hole!
...and rented from a builder...
...two rooms...
...in the basement of a little house in the garden.
...I left my work at the museum...
...and began writing a novel about Pontius Pilate.
And then...
...one day...
...last spring, something happened far more important...
...than winning hundred thousand rubles.
Do you like my flowers?
No!
You generally don't like flowers?
No, I like flowers...
...but not this kind!
Which, then?
I like roses...
Please go on...
...and don't leave anything out!
Go on?
Why, you can guess for yourself how it went on...
Love leaped out in front of us ...
...like a murderer in an alley leaping out of nowhere,
...and struck us both at once.
As lightning strikes.
...as the bandit's knife strikes!
...I went out that day with yellow flowers so that you would find me at last...
...if it hadn't happened, I would have poisoned myself!
...because my life was empty...
No one knew of our liaison...
Her husband didn't know...
...her acquaintances didn't know.
But who is she?
She used to come to me every day...
...but I would begin waiting for her in the morning.
Scissors, knives sharpened... axes, scythes sharpened...
You are a Master!
She, by the way, insisted afterwards...
that we had, loved each other for a long time, never having seen each other,
and that she was living with a different man... as I was, too, then... with that, what's her...
You were married?
With that... Varenka... Manechka...
...striped dress
... museum...
Anyhow, I don't remember.
I foretell you fame, Master.
...only work faster...
...I'm waiting for the already promised last words.
..."the fifth procurator of Judea, the equestrian Pontius Pilate"
My whole life is in this novel...
It was finished in the month of August...
And finally the hour came when I had to leave my secret refuge and go out into life.
And I went out into life...
holding my novel in my hands...
...and then my life ended!
Tell me please...
...who are you?
In what sense?
who had given you the idea of writing a novel ...
...on such a strange theme?
Will you publish the novel ?
You know...
I cannot decide the question on my own...
..other members of the editorial board have to acquaint themselves with your work
...namely, the critics Latunsky ...
...Ariman...
...and the writer Mstislav Lavrovich
...I was told that the publisher was provided with material for two years ahead...
...and therefore the question of printing your novel...
...did not arise.
Good bye!
What do I remember after that?
Yes, red petals strewn across the title page...
and also the eyes of my friend...
Yes, those eyes I remember.
No...for pushing me to fight...
I don't blame her... not at all!
But why did I...why did I go
...to another publisher so they would publish an excerpt from the novel...
"Enemy under the publisher's wing"
...author ensured that the outrageous publisher would protect him...
...had attempted to foist into print an apology for Jesus Christ.
...critic Ariman.
...we must strike, and strike hard, at Pilatism...
of this the icon-dauber who had ventured to foist it into print!
...Mstislav Lavrovich
I assure you, the works of Ariman and Lavrovich...
...could be counted as jokes compared with what...
...critic Latunsky wrote.
...Suffice it to say it was entitled...
"A Militant Old Believer"
I will poison Latunsky!...
Then came joyless days...
...the novel was finished...
I had nothing more to do!
...I lived from one day to the next...
...we sat on a rug in front of a fireplace...
...looking into the fire...
Besides,
...we saw each other less than before...
She was going for a walk...
..and I suddenly gained a new friend!
...I'm not inclined to making friends...
...I lack confidence...I'm suspicious...
...I'd sooner get to like someone unexpected...
...out of the blue...
...devil knows why this one...
...I remember him fondly, that's how I liked him...
Good day...
I have a very funny name Mogarych
Aloisy Mogarych...
I'm a journalist and live near by just like you...in a small apartment
...a little too small...
...I went to talk to the owner of this house...
...and he told me that you live here...
...I've read a part of your novel...
...and I love literature...
...please, let me read the rest of it...
Your novel is incredible!
I thank you, but the critics don't think so.
I'll tell you if you want...
...what the publisher said of your novel
Get acquainted...
Good day!
I have a very funny name Mogarych
Aloisy Mogarych... I'm a journalist...
...I live near by just like you...in a small apartment
...a little too small...
...so I don't invite you to my place...
...but if you don't run me away...
...I will visit you often.
I don't like him very much...
I haven't met a man yet who within a space of a minute...
...could explain the meaning of a newspaper blurb...
...and do it without any effort.
He's a smart person!
It's your business...
I'm just telling you that he made the worst impression on me!