Mikhail Afanasievich Bulgakov
The Master and Margarita
PART SIX
SADOWAYA 302-bis HOUSECOM Administration
Good day!
May I see the chairman?
...Bosoy?... Bosoys?... Bosoyes?
Chairman... isn't here...
Is he at home?
I've come on the most urgent business.
And when will he be here?
What about the secretary?
...Prolezhnov?
...the secretary isn't here either...
...nobody knows when he'll be back!
The secretary is sick!
But surely there's somebody in the management?
Me!
You see...
...I am the sole heir of the late Berlioz...
...my nephew...
...who, as you know, died at the Patriarch's Ponds...
...and I am obliged, in accordance with the law...
...to take over the inheritance contained in our apartment no. 50...
I'm not informed, comrade...
But, excuse me, you are a member of the management and are obliged...
Management member Pyatnazhko?
Yes...
Eh, what a complication!
As if on purpose, all of them at once...
Good day!
My name is Poplavsky...
I am the uncle... of the late Berlioz...
Of course, of course!
Just one look and I knew...
...it was you!
Such a calamity, eh?
What's going on here, eh?
Run over by a tram-car?
Clean!... Clean!
I was a witness!... Oh yes!
Believe me...
...bang! and the head's gone!
Crunch - there goes the right leg!
Crunch - there goes the left leg!
That's what these trams have brought us to!
Forgive me...
...were you a friend of my late Misha?
No, I can't take any more! I'll go and swallow three hundred drops of tincture of valerian...
No, it's too much...
...I just can't!
I can't...
when I remember: the wheel!
...over the leg... Crunch!
The wheel alone weighs three hundred pounds...
I'll go to bed...
Forget myself in sleep...
Pardon me...
...but did you send me the telegram?
He did!
Well, so I sent the telegram.!
What of it?
I believe I asked in good Russian?
What of it?
Passport!
What office issued this document?
The 412th
Ah, yes, of course!
I know that office, they issue passports to anybody.
Whereas I, for instance, wouldn't issue one to the likes of you...
Not on your life I wouldn't!
I'd just take one look at your face and instantly refuse!
Your presence at the funeral is cancelled.
Kindly return to your place of residence.
Azazello!
I'm coming...
Good day!
Poplavsky!
I hope everything's understood now?
Return immediately to Kiev...
...Sit there stiller than water, lower than grass...
...and of any apartments in Moscow...
...don't even dream!
Clear?
Poplavsky... Are you alive?
Pardon me...
...May I ask you, citizen...
...where apartment no. 50 is?
Further up...
I humbly thank you, citizen
Yes?
Well... come up!
...as you called.
Hello?
...yes!
How's that?
Baron Meigel?
I'm listening...
Bleh!... yuck!
Mister artiste is at home today...
Yes, he'll be glad to see you.
Yes, guests...
A tailcoat or a black suit.
What?
By twelve midnight!
What you would like?
I must really see...
Mr. artiste...
What?
You mean him himself?
Himself...
Go into the living room...
Oh Lord!
Well, sir...
...what can I do for you?
I, am the manager of the buffet at the Variety Theatre...
No!
No... Not a word more!
Never and by no means...
Nothing from your buffet will ever pass my lips!
I walked past your stand yesterday, and even now I am unable to forget either the sturgeon or the feta cheese!
My precious man!
Feta cheese is never green in color, someone has tricked you...
It ought to be white!
Yes, and the tea?
It's simply swill!
I saw with my own eyes some slovenly girl...
...add tap water from a bucket to your huge samovar,
...while the tea went on being served...
No, my dear, it's impossible!
I beg your pardon...
...but I've come about something else, and sturgeon has nothing to do with it...
How do you mean, nothing to do with it, when it's spoiled?
They supplied sturgeon of the second freshness.
My dear heart, that is nonsense!
There is only one freshness - the first - and it is also the last!
And if sturgeon is of the second freshness, that means it is simply rotten.
I have come about something else!
About something else?
Not in this one!
And what else could have brought you to me?
However, I'm glad...
Fagot! A tabouret for mister buffet-manager!
Here...
I humbly thank you!
Don't mention...
Oh! Are you hurt?
I like sitting low down it's less dangerous falling from a low height.
Take off your trousers and dry them before the fire!
No... no...
Thank you!
Ah, yes, so we left off at the sturgeon...
My dear heart...
Freshness, freshness, freshness!
That should be the motto of every barman.
Here, wouldn't you like to try...
My humble... I...
No, no, try it!
Humbly...
Try it... try it...
A cup of wine?
White, red?
What country's wine do you prefer at this time of day?
My humble... I don't drink...
A shame!
What about a game of dice, then?
Or do you have some other favorite game? Dominoes?
Cards?
I don't play games!
Altogether bad...
...why not?
As you will, but there's something not nice hidden in men...
...who avoid wine, games, the society of charming women, table talk.
Such people are either gravely ill or secretly hate everybody around them.
And so, let me hear your business?
Yesterday you were so good as to do some conjuring tricks...
I?
I'm sorry!...
It's somehow even unbecoming to me!
I'm sorry, I mean...
...the séance of black magic...
Ah, yes, yes, yes...
My dear, I'll reveal a secret to you...
I'm not an artiste at all...
How so?
I simply wanted to see the Muscovites...
en masse, so to speak!
And that could be done most conveniently in a theatre!
And so my retinue...
Glad to meet!
...arranged for this séance.
I merely sat and looked at the Muscovites...
Now, don't go changing countenance...
...but tell me, what is it in connection with this séance...
...that has brought you to me.
If you please, you see, among other things...
...there were banknotes flying down from the ceiling...
So they snatched them all up...
...Snatched up, yes...
And then a young man comes to my bar and gives me a ten-ruble bill...
...Yes, a young man...
...Gives a tenner...
...a tenner... ha...
I give him eight-fifty in change...
...eight-fifty...
Then another one...
Also a young man?
No, an older one.
Then a third, and a fourth I keep giving them change
And today I check the cash box...
...and there, instead of money...
...cut-up paper!
They hit the buffet for a hundred and nine rubles..
But can they have thought those were real bills?
I can't admit the idea that they did it knowingly.
Can they be crooks?
Can there be among the Muscovites...
...a bunch of crooks?
That is mean!
You're a poor man...
Really?... A poor man?
How much have you got in savings?
Two hundred and forty-nine thousand rubles in five savings banks...
and two hundred ten-ruble gold pieces at home under the floor!
Well, of course, that's not a great sum...
...but enough for a modest life...
...though, as a matter of fact, you have no need of it anyway...
When are you going to die?
Nobody knows that...
...and it's nobody's concern!
Sure nobody knows...
The binomial theorem, you might think...
He's going to die in nine months, next February...
...of liver cancer...
...in the clinic of the First Moscow State University...
...in ward number four.
Two hundred and forty-nine thousand, in nine months...
...rounding it off that comes to twenty-seven thousand a month...
...Not a lot...
but enough for a modest life Plus those gold pieces.
He won't get to realize the gold pieces!
On Andrei Fokich's demise...
...the house will immediately be torn down, and the gold will be sent to the State Bank.
And I wouldn't advise you to go to the clinic...
What's the sense of dying in a ward...
...to the groans and wheezes of the hopelessly ill?
Isn't it better to give a banquet on the twenty-seven thousand...
..., then take poison...
...and move on to the other world to the sounds of strings...
...surrounded by drunken beauties and dashing friends?
However, we've started day-dreaming!
Show me your cut-up paper...
Tenners!
My dear...
...you really are unwell!
A- and... and if they... again... that is...
Well, then come to us again.
You're always welcome...
I'm glad of our acquaintance...
What else do you want?
I forgot my hat...
Not mine...
You came without a sword?
The messenger from Variety Karpov testified...
...that the culprit lives in apartment no. 50
...I also point out the fact, that officially apartment 50...
...is inhabited by the missing director of Variety...
...Likhodeev...
...and the chairman of MASSOLIT Berlioz...
...who was killed by the tram-car, under strange circumstances!
His death is also...
...connected with the outrageous situation in MASSOLIT today...
Apartment no. 50 was visited, and not just once...
However, none of these measures yielded any results...
...and no one was discovered in the apartment during any of these visits!
Today's theft testifies to...
.. the presence of the gang in Moscow, and the escalation of their crimes!
It looks like, if you please!...
...that thousands of witnesses,
...spectators at Variety...
...saw the magician...
...and his damned assistants...
...and nonetheless there is no possibility of finding him!
Are you saying he went underground?
...or never came to Moscow at all?
The only chance... agent Meigel!
He made a phone appointment for a visit...
...with this... magician.
Send telegrams with descriptions of the criminals, and also the missing people...
...Likhodeev, Rimsky... Varenukha
Question all the occupants of the apartment building again...
...bring in anyone who crosses the gate...
...to the yard or the corridor!
In addition, post the guards on the roof and at the back entrance!
Agent Meigel... former baron...
...I will deal with him personally!
Arkady Apollonovich is unwell...
...he had retired for the night, and cannot come to the phone...
Who's asking?...
...This second... at once... this minute!
NKVD!
Yes, it's me!
I'm listening...
The slippers...
...Put the slippers on...
...you'll catch cold!
Put the slippers on... your feet will get cold!
Yes, yes...
...surely!
I understand...
...I'll leave at once!
Well, then...
...Prokhor Petrovich?
...who is this Woland?
...and how did he, with your help, find his way to Variety?
I swear, I know decidedly nothing about any Woland!
Weren't the missing Likhodeev supposed to have brought to your attention...
...the program of the performance?
I swear that no program of the performance...
.. of no Woland, no Likhodeev...
...has ever sent for my approval!
And he never called me about the arrival of Woland!...
I absolutely don't understand... don't understand...
How Likhodeev could allow this séance at the Variety!
Is this your decision?
Yes!... yes!
...mine!
It's mine!...
But I don't remember...
...I wasn't in my clothes!
You remember everything!
Bring in Sempleyarov...
Come in!
It's a difficult and most unpleasant conversation but I want to tell with complete sincerity...
...actress Militsa Andreevna Pokobatko...
We'll get to her later!...
Now tell us about the séance of black magic at the Variety
As an intelligent and cultivated man, being the eyewitness to this outrageous séance...
...I want to describe the mysterious masked magician known as Woland...
...his two scoundrelly assistants, whom I remember perfectly well!
Well, what do you say?...
Prokhor Petrovich...
LENINGRAD
Second floor, comrades!
Room twelve...
Open up Rimsky... We know you're there!
Here!
You're under arrest!
Lock me up in an armored cell, put armed guards at the door.
Interesting?...
...who do they bury with such...
...puzzled faces?
Berlioz!
Mikhail Alexandrovich...
...chairman of MASSOLIT.
Among them a truly uncommon mood...
they carry the deceased...
but think of where his head might be.
What head?
You see...
...this morning in the hall of Griboedov's...
...the deceased's head was filched from the coffin.
How can that be?
Devil knows how!
...it wouldn't be a bad idea to ask Behemoth about it!
A terribly clever theft it was.
And, above all, it's incomprehensible who needs this head and for what!
So it means that those are writers following the coffin!
Well, naturally they are!
And do you know them by sight?
All of them to a man!
Tell me, is the critic Latunsky among them?
How could he not be?...
He's there...
...at the end of the front row... see?
...he's raising his eyes to heaven!
And I can see, Margarita Nikolaevna...
...that you hate this Latunsky!
Do you know me?...
Well, I don't know you...
Where could you know me from?...
...But all the same I've been sent to you...
...on a little business.
You want to arrest me?
Nothing of the kind!
...What is it - you start a conversation, and right away it's got to be an arrest!
I simply...
...have business with you...
What business?
I've been sent...
...to invite you for a visit this evening...
...to a very distinguished foreigner!
A new breed has appeared - a street pander!
Fool!
Scoundrel!
darkness that came from the Mediterranean Sea...
...covered the city hated by the procurator.
Yershalaim - the great city...
...vanished as if it had never existed in the world!
So you, too, can just vanish away...
...along with your burnt notebook and dried-up rose!
Sit here on the bench alone...
...and entreat him...
...to set you free, to let you breathe the air,
...to go from your memory!
It's possible to find out about the pages...
You bribed Natasha, right!
But how could you find out my thoughts?
Tell me, who are you?
From which institution?
What a bore...
I'm not from any institution...
My name is Azazello...
...but anyhow that tells you nothing...
But do you know anything about him?!
I implore you, tell me only one thing... is he alive?
Don't torment me!
Well, he's alive, he's alive...
Oh, God!
Please...
...no excitements and exclamations!
Yes!
Forgive me...
The foreigner to whom I'm inviting...
...is not dangerous at all.
And not a living soul will know of this visit!
That I can guarantee you!
If I understand you rightly, you're hinting...
...that I may find out about him there?
I'll go!
I'll go wherever you like!
Difficult folk, these women!
Why was I sent on this business?...
Behemoth should have gone, he's a charmer...
It's half an hour now that I've been wangling you into it!
So you'll go?
I will!
Be so good as to accept this, then...
It'll come in useful, Margarita Nikolaevna...
...you've aged a lot from grief...
...in the last half-year.
Tonight, at exactly half past nine...
...be so good as to take off all your clothes...
...and rub your face and your whole body with this ointment.
Then do whatever you like...
...only don't go far from the telephone!
At ten I'll call you and tell you all you need to know.
Understood?
...Understood
This thing is pure gold, you can tell by the weight. So, then,...
...I understand perfectly well that I'm being bribed and drawn into some shady story,
...for which I'm going to pay dearly.
What is all this? You're at it again?...
Give me back the cream!
No, wait!
Give it back...
I know what I'm getting into...
But I'm getting into it on account of him!
because I have no more hope for anything in this world...
But I want to tell you that...
...if you're going to ruin me, you'll be ashamed!
Yes, ashamed!
I'm perishing on account of love!
Hah!
What a cream! What a cream!
Forgive me and forget me...
...as soon as possible...
...forget me.
I am leaving you...
...forever
Do not look for me, it is useless...
I have become a witch...
...from the grief and calamities...
...that have struck me...
It's time for me to go... Farewell
Margarita
How... How can it be?
How did you do it?
...Margarita Nikolaevna?
It's the cream!
The cream, the cream!
Leave it! Leave it...
Devil take it!
Leave it all...
Or, no, keep it...
...keep it as a souvenir!
Take everything in the room...
Azazello will call now!
He'll call!
And the foreigner's not dangerous...
...yes, I understand now that he's not dangerous!
It's the neighbor from downstairs...
Ah, hello, Nikolai Ivanovich...
Good evening!...
Coming back from a meeting?...
And I...
...am sitting alone, as you see, bored, looking at the moon and listening to the waltz...
Nikolai Ivanovich!...
That is impolite!...
I'm still a lady after all...
It's boorish not to reply when someone is talking to you.
Ah, what a boring type you are, Nikolai Ivanovich!
Generally, I'm so sick of you all...
...that I can't even tell you!
I'm parting with you! Well, go to the devil!
Azazello speaking!...
Dear, dear Azazello!
It's time. Take off!
When you fly over the gate, shout "Invisible!"
Then fly over the city a little, to get used to it...
...and after that head south, out of the city, and straight for the river.
You're expected!
Farewell, Nikolai Ivanovich...
Farewell for ever!
I'm flying away!
Farewell, Natasha!
Margarita Nikolaevna...
Invisible... and free!
not at all... you can't!
You should turn the toilet light off after you, that's what I'm telling you, Pelageya Petrovna
or else we'll apply to have you evicted!
You're a good one yourself!
You're both good ones!
"DRAMLIT HOUSE"
Khustov, Dvubratsky, Quant, Beskudnikov...
Latunsky!... Latunsky!
Latunsky!... Why, he's the one...
...he's the one who ruined the master!
No point sitting around, however...