Mikhail Afanasievich Bulgakov
The Master and Margarita
PART ONE
You see... What was written in the gospels never happened.
We've commissioned from you a long anti-religious poem...
and you wrote it exceptionally fast.
Unfortunately it does not quite satisfy me.
I perceived Jesus as a negative character.
but nevertheless the whole poem has to be written over again.
I want to show you that Jesus simply never existed in the world.
Give us seltzer. There is no seltzer.
Is there beer?
Beer'll be delivered towards evening.
Then what is there? Apricot soda, only warm.
Well, let's have it, let's have it.
Pah, the devil!
You know, Ivan, I nearly had heatstroke just now.
There was even something like a hallucination..
Maybe it's time to send it all to the devil and go to Kislovodsk.
Well, and so...
I'd like to point to ancient historians, for instance, the famous Philo of Alexandria
and the brilliantly educated Flavius Josephus,
who never said a word about the existence of Jesus.
And the passage in the fifteenth book of Tacitus's famous Annals, the forty-fourth chapter
was nothing but a later spurious interpolation.
There's not a single Eastern religion, in which, as a rule, an immaculate virgin did not give birth to a god.
So without inventing anything new, the Christians created their Jesus, who in fact never lived.
Lets sit down.
I'd like to mention Egyptian Osiris, a benevolent god and the son of Heaven and Earth.
the Phoenician god Tammoz, and about Marduk, and even about a lesser known, terrible god, Vitzliputzli,
once greatly venerated by the Aztecs in Mexico.
A German.
An Englishman.
My, he must be hot in those gloves.
You portrayed the birth of Jesus, the son of God, very well and satirically,
but the gist of it is that a whole series of sons of God were born before Jesus.
Like, say, the Phrygian Atris.
And, to put it briefly, not one of them was born or ever existed, Jesus included.
What's necessary is that, instead of portraying his birth...
you portray the absurd rumors of their coming.
Otherwise it follows from your story that he really was born.
Excuse me, please, if, not being your acquaintance...
but the subject of your learned conversation is so interesting that...
May I sit down?
Please.
Unless I heard wrong, you were pleased to say,
that Jesus never existed?
That is precisely what I was saying.
And you were agreeing with your interlocutor?
A hundred per cent!
Amazing!
Forgive my importunity,
but, as I understand, along with everything else, you also do not believe in God?
I swear I won't tell anyone!
No, we don't believe in God.
And we can speak of it quite freely.
Allow me to thank you with all my heart!
What are you thanking him for?
For some very important information, which is of great interest to me as a traveler.
But, allow me to ask you:
what, then, about the proofs of God's existence?
of which, as it is known, there are exactly five?
Not one of these proofs is worth anything.
You must agree that in the realm of reason there can be no proof of God's existence.
Bravo! Bravo!
You have perfectly repeated restless old Immanuel's thought in this regard.
But here's the hitch:
he roundly demolished all five proofs,
and then, as if mocking himself, constructed a sixth of his own.
Kant's proof, is equally unconvincing.
They ought to take this Kant and give him a three-year sentence to labour camps for such proofs!
Ivan!
Precisely.
Just the place for him!
Didn't I tell him that time at breakfast:
As you will, professor, but what you've thought up doesn't hang together.
It's clever, maybe, but mighty unclear.
You'll be laughed at.
At breakfast... to Kant
And sending him to the camps is unfeasible.
for the simple reason that he has been abiding for over a hundred years now...
in places considerably more remote than any camp.
and to extract him from there is in no way possible.
Too bad!
Yes, too bad.
But here is a question that is troubling me:
If there is no God, then, one may ask, who governs human life?
Man governs it himself!
Pardon me.
But in order to govern, one needs to have a precise plan
for a certain, length of time, well, say, a thousand years.
Allow me to ask you, how can man govern
if he cannot even vouch for his own tomorrow?
And in fact, imagine that you, for instance...
start governing, giving orders to others and yourself, acquire a taste for it...
and suddenly you get... lung cancer.
Yes, cancer.
and so your governing is over.
You are no longer interested in anyone's fate but your own
Your family starts lying to you.
Feeling that something is wrong, you rush to learned doctors...
then to quacks, and sometimes to fortune-tellers.
Like the first, so the second and third are completely senseless, as you understand.
And it all ends tragically.
a man who still recently thought he was governing something...
suddenly winds up lying motionless in a wooden box. and the people around him
seeing that the man lying there is no longer good for anything, burn him in an oven.
And sometimes it's worse still.
the man has just decided to go to Kislovodsk...
a trifling matter, it seems, but even this he cannot accomplish, because suddenly
no one knows why, he slips and falls under a tram-car!
Are you going to say it was he who governed himself that way?
Would it not be more correct to think that he was governed by someone else entirely?
You'd like to smoke, I see?
Which kind do you prefer?
What, have you got several?
Which do you prefer?
OkayOur Brand.
Our Brand.
Well, devil take him!
yes, man is mortal, no one disputes that..
But the thing is...
Yes, man is mortal, but that would be only half the trouble.
The worst of it is that he's sometimes unexpectedly mortal.
there's the trick!
And generally he's unable to say what he's going to do this same evening.
Well, there's some exaggeration here. About this same evening I do know more or less certainly.
It goes without saying, if a brick should fall on my head on Bronnaya...
No brick, will ever fall on anyone's head just out of the blue.
In this particular case, you are not in danger of that at all
I assure you.
You will die a different death.
Maybe you know what kind precisely?
Willingly.
One, two...
Mercury in the second house... moon gone...
evening - six, seven - disaster...
Your head will be cut off!
By whom?
Enemies? Interventionists?
No.
by a Russian woman, a Komsomol girl.
that's not very likely.
And I beg you to excuse me, but it's so.
I wanted to ask you, what are you going to do tonight,
if it's not a secret?
It's not a secret.
Right now I'll stop by my place on Sadovaya.
then at ten this evening there will be a meeting at Massolit - Moscow Association of Authors...
of which I'm a chairman,
and I will chair it.
No.
that simply cannot be.
Why not?
Because, Annushka has already bought the sunflower oil.
and has not only bought it, but has already spilled it.
So the meeting will not take place.
Forgive me, but what has sunflower oil got to do with it... and which Annushka?
Sunflower oil has got this to do with it...
Have you ever happened, citizen, to be in a hospital for the mentally ill?
I have, I have, and more than once.
Where haven't I been.
Only it's too bad...
I didn't get around to asking the professor what schizophrenia is.
So you will have to find that out from him yourself, Ivan Nikolaevich.
How do you know my name?
Gracious, Ivan Nikolaevich, who doesn't know poet Ivan Homeless?..
Excuse me.
could you wait one little moment.
I want to say a couple of words to my friend.
Oh, with pleasure. It's so nice here under the lindens, and, by the way, I'm not in any hurry.
Listen here, Misha, he's no foreign tourist, he's a spy.
A Russian émigré who has crossed back over. Ask for his papers before he gets away.
You think so?
Believe me.
he's pretending to be a fool in order to find out something or other.
Just hear how he speaks Russian. Let's go and detain him, or he'll get away.
Excuse me for having forgotten, in the heat of our dispute, to introduce myself.
Here is my card...
my passport, and an invitation to come to Moscow for a consultation.
You've been invited here as a consultant. Professor?
Yes, as a consultant.
You're German?
I? Yes, perhaps I am German.
And what is your field?
I am a specialist in black magic.
There he goes.
And... and you've been invited here in that capacity?
Yes, in that capacity.
In a state library here some original manuscripts...
of the tenth-century necromancer Gerbert of Aurillac have been found.
So it is necessary for me to sort them out.
I am the only specialist in the world.
Aha! You're a historian.
I am a historian.
This evening there will be an interesting story at the Ponds.
Bear in mind that Jesus did exist.
You see. Professor, on this question we hold to a different point of view.
There's no need for any points of view, he simply existed, that's all.
But there's need for some proof...
There's no need for any proofs. It's all very simple.
In a white cloak with blood-red lining,
with the shuffling gait of a cavalryman...
early in the morning of the fourteenth day of the spring month of Nisan...
there came out to the covered colonnade between the two wings of the palace of Herod the Great
the procurator of Judea, Pontius Pilate.
The accused is from Galilee?
Yes.
Was the case sent to the tetrarch Yes, Procurator.
And what then?
He refused to make a decision on the case and sent the Sanhedrin's death sentence to you for confirmation.
Bring in the accused.
So it was you who incited the people to destroy the temple of Yershalaim?
Good man! Believe me...
Is it me that you are calling a good man?
Bring the centurion Ratslayer.
The criminal calls me good man..
Take him outside for a moment, explain to him how I ought to be spoken to.
But no maiming.
The Roman procurator is called Hegemon.
Use no other words.
Stand at attention.
Do you understand me, or do I hit you?
I understand. Don't beat me.
Name?
Mine?
I know my own.
Yeshua.
Any surname?
Ha-Nozri.
Where do you come from?
The town of Gamala.
Who are you by blood?
I don't know exactly, I don't remember my parents.
I was told that my father was a Syrian.
Where is your permanent residence?
I have no permanent home, I travel from town to town.
That can be put more briefly -
a vagrant.
Any family?
None. I'm alone in the world.
Do you know any language besides Aramaic?
Yes. Greek.
So it was you, who called on the people...
to destroy the temple building?
Goo...
Never, Hegemon, never in my life was I going to destroy the temple building...
nor did I incite anyone to this senseless act
All sorts of people...
gather in this town for the feast.
magicians, astrologers, diviners and criminals, and occasionally also liars.
You, for instance, are a liar.
It is written clearly:
Incited to destroy the temple.
People have testified to it.
These good people, Hegemon haven't any learning.
and have confused everything I told them.
Generally, I'm beginning to be afraid that this confusion may go on for a very long time.
And all because he writes down the things I say incorrectly.
stop pretending that you're a madman.
there's not much written in your record, but what there is enough to hang you.
No, no, Hegemon!
there's one with a goatskin parchment who follows me, follows me and keeps writing all the time.
But once I peeked into this parchment and was horrified.
I said decidedly nothing of what's written there.
I implored him: Burn your parchment, I beg you!
But he tore it out of my hands and ran away.
Who is that?
Matthew Levi - He used to be a tax collector.
He treated me hostilely at first and even insulted me...
that is, thought he insulted meby calling me a dog.
I personally see nothing bad about this animal, that I should be offended by this word.
However, after listening to me, he began to soften.
finally threw the money down in the road and said he would go journeying with me.
A tax collector, do you hear, threw money down in the road.
Yes.
He said that henceforth money had become hateful to him since then he has been my companion.
Matthew Levi?
Yes. Matthew Levi.
And what was it in any case that you said about the temple...
to the crowd in the bazaar?
I said, Hegemon, that the temple of the old faith would fall...
and a new temple of truth would be built.
I said it that way so as to make it more understandable.
And why did you stir up...
the people in the bazaar, you vagrant...
talking about the truth, of which you have no notion?
What is truth?
The truth is...
that your head aches...
and aches so badly that you're having faint-hearted thoughts of death.
You're not only unable to speak to me...
but it is even hard for you to look at me.
And I am now your unwilling torturer.
which upsets me.
You can't even think about anything and only dream that your dog should come.
apparently the one being you are attached to.
But your suffering will soon be over.
your headache will go away.
Well, there, it's all over.
and I'm extremely glad of it.
I'd advise you, Hegemon, to leave the palace for a while and go for a stroll somewhere in the vicinity.
say, in the gardens on the Mount of Olives.
A storm will come later on, towards evening
A stroll would do you much good, and I would be glad to accompany you.
Certain new thoughts have occurred to me, which I think you might find interesting.
I'd willingly share them with you,
the more so as you give the impression...
of being a very intelligent man.
The trouble is that you are too closed off...
and have definitively lost faith in people.
You must agree, one can't place all one's affection in a dog.
Your life is impoverished, Hegemon.
Unbind his hands.
How did you know I wanted to call my dog?
It's very simple.
You were moving your hand in the air.
as if you wanted to stroke something, and your lips.
Admit...
...that you are a great physician?
No, Procurator, I am not a physician.
Very well, then.
if you want to keep it a secret, do so.
It has no direct bearing on the case.
So you maintain that you did not incite anyone to destroy...
or set fire to, or in any other way demolish the temple?
I repeat...
I did not incite anyone to such acts, Hegemon.
Do I look like a halfwit?
Oh, no, you don't look like a halfwit.
Swear, then, that it wasn't so.
By what do you want me to swear?
Well, let's say, by your life.
It's high time you swore by it,
since it's hanging by a hair, I can tell you
You don't think it was you who hung it, Hegemon?
If so, you are very mistaken.
I can cut that hair.
In that, too, you are mistaken.
You must agree that surely only he who hung it can cut the hair.
So, so, now I have no doubts that the idle loafers of Yershalaim followed at your heels.
I don't know who hung such a tongue on you, but he hung it well.
Incidentally, tell me, is it true that you entered Yershalaim by the Susa gate...
riding on an ass, accompanied by a crowd of riff-raff...
who shouted greetings to you as some kind of prophet?
I don't even have an ass, Hegemon.
I did enter Yershalaim by the Susa gate, but on foot,
accompanied only by Matthew Levi,
and no one shouted anything to me, because no one in Yershalaim knew me then
Do you happen to know, such men as:
a certain Dysmas, another named Gestas, and a third named Bar-Rabban?
No.
I do not know these good people.
And now tell me, why is it that you use me words good people all the time?
Do you call everyone that, or what?
Everyone.
There are no evil people in the world.
And you preach it?
Yes.
But take, for instance, the centurion Mark,
the one known as Rat-slayer...
is he good man too?
Yes.
True...
...he's an unhappy man.
Since the good people disfigured him, he has become cruel and hard.
I'd be curious to know who maimed him?
The good people.
fell on him like dogs on a bear.
Germans fastened on his neck, his arms, his legs.
The infantry maniple was encircled.
and if one flank hadn't been cut by a cavalry turn,
of which I was the commander,
you, philosopher, would not have had the chance to speak with the Ratslayer.
If I could speak with him, I'm sure he'd change sharply.
It's not going to happen...
fortunately for everyone.
and I will be the first to see to it.
Write!
the hegemon has looked into the case of Yeshua,
alias Ha-Nozri.
and found in it no grounds for indictment.
Consequently...
the procurator has not confirmed the death sentence on Ha-Nozri.
But seeing that Ha-Nozri's...
mad Utopian talk might cause disturbances in Yershalaim...
the procurator is removing Yeshua from Yershalaim...
and putting him under confinement in Stratonian Caesarea...
on the Mediterranean.
where the procurator's residence is.
Is that all about him?
Unfortunately not.
The law of lese-majesty.
In these cases capital punishment is recommended...
...and executed on the same day including holidays...
...according to the law, the indictment includes children too,
...and in special cases children's children too...
...family of the condemned man is prohibited to grieve!
Listen, Ha-Nozri.
did you ever...
say anything about the great Caesar?
To speak the truth is easy and pleasant.
I have no need to know, whether it is pleasant or unpleasant for you to speak the truth.
You will have to speak it anyway.
But, as you speak, weigh every word...
unless you want a not only inevitable but also painful death.
Answer, then.
do you know a certain Judas from Kiriath?
and what precisely did you say to him,
about Caesar,
if you said anything?
It was like this:
The evening before last...
near the temple, I made the acquaintance of a young man who called himself Judas.
from the town of Kiriath.
He invited me to his place,
in the Lower City...
and treated me to.
A good man.
A very good man and an inquisitive one.
He showed the greatest interest in my thoughts.
and received me very cordially.
Lit the lamps?
Yes.
asked me to give my view of state authority.
He was extremely interested in this question.
And what did you say?
Or are you going to reply that you've forgotten what you said?
Among other things,
I said that all authority is violence over people.
and that a time will come when there will be no authority of the Caesars...
nor any other authority.
Man will pass into the kingdom of truth and justice...
where generally there will be no need for any authority.
Go on!
I didn't go on.
Here men ran in, bound me, and took me away to prison.
There never has been, is not, and never will be...
any authority in this world greater or better for people than the authority of the emperor Tiberius.
And it is not for you, insane criminal, to reason about it.
Convoy, off the balcony.
Leave me alone with the criminal.
this is a state matter.
see that some misfortune has come about because I talked...
with that young man from Kiriath.
I have a foreboding, Hegemon, that he will come to grief...
and I am very sorry for him
'I think, that there is now someone else in the world...
for whom you ought to feel sorrier than' for Judas of Kiriath.
So, then. Mark Ratslayer,
a cold and convinced torturer.
the people who, as I see, beat you for your preaching,.
the robbers Dysmas and Gestas,
who with their confreres killed four soldiers.
and, finally, the dirty traitor Judas.
are all good people?
Yes.
And the kingdom of truth will come?
It will, Hegemon.
It will never come.
Criminal!
Yeshua Ha-Nozri...
do you believe in any gods?
God is one, I believe in him.
Then pray to him.
Pray hard.
However... that won't help.
Hateful city.
if they'd put a knife in you before your meeting with Judas of Kiriath, it really would have been better.
Why don't you let me go, Hegemon?
I see they want to kill me.
Do you suppose, wretch,
that the Roman procurator will let a man go who has said what you have said?
do you think I'm ready to take your place?
I don't share...
your thoughts!
And listen to me:
if from this moment on you say even one word,
if you speak to anyone at all...
beware of me.
I repeat to youbeware!
Hegemon...
Silence!
To me!
I confirm the death sentence...
passed on Yeshua Ha-Nozri.
summon to the palace head of the secret service,
then the president of the Sanhedrin...
and the head of the temple guard in Yershalaim.
It was around ten o'clock in the morning...
my esteemed Ivan Nikolaevich.
Your story is extremely interesting, Professor, though it does not coincide at all with the Gospel stories.
Good heavens.
you of all people should know that precisely nothing of what is written in the Gospels...
ever actually took place.
and if we start referring to the Gospels as a historical source...
That's so, but I'm afraid...
no one can confirm that what you've just told us actually took place either.
Oh, yes.
That there is one who can.
The thing is...
that I was personally present at it all.
only secretly, incognito, so to speak.
and therefore I beg you - not a word to anyone.
total secrecy.
how long have you been in Moscow?
I just arrived in Moscow this very minute.
Yes, yes, yes...
incidentally it's all possible...
Pontius Pilate, and the balcony, and so forth.
Did you come alone or with your wife?
Alone.
I'm always alone.
And where are your things, Professor?
At the Metropol?
Where are you staying?
I?
Nowhere.
How's that? But... where are you going to live?
In your apartment.
I... I'm very glad, but...
you won't be comfortable at my place.
I have a neighbor, comrade Likhodeev
and they have wonderful rooms at the Metropol.
And there's no devil either?
There isn't any devil!
Well, now that is positively interesting, no matter what one asks for, there isn't any.
So you mean there just simply isn't any?
Calm down. Professor.
You sit here for a little minute with Comrade Homeless...
and I'll just run to the comer to make a phone call...
and then we'll take you wherever you like.
You don't know the city.
Well, then make your call...
But I implore you, before you go, at least believe that the devil exists.
I no longer ask you for anything more.
Very good, very good.
Mikhail Alexandrovich!
Would you like me to have a telegram sent at once to your uncle in Kiev.
Looking for the turnstile, citizen? This way, please! Straight on and you'll get where you're going.
How about a little pint pot for my information to set up an ex-choirmaster.