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been made to suffer for life? I admit that I've cheated and lied and lived a secret life hidden from everyone, but even that doesn't deserve such cruel punishment. Something is bound to happen because nothing lasts forever. And besides, the dream I had was prophetic, I swear it was."

This is what Margarita Nikolayevna whispered to herself as she gazed at the crimson shades suffused with sunlight, nervously got dressed, and combed her short curly hair before the triple mirror of her vanity table.

Margarita's dream that night had truly been unusual. The fact was that she had not dreamed about the Master during that whole agonizing winter. At night he would leave her, and it was only during the daytime that she suffered. But now she had dreamed about him.

Margarita had dreamed about an unfamiliar locale—a bleak and dismal place, under an overcast, early-spring sky. Beneath a cover of patchy clouds there was a flock of noiseless rooks. A rough bridge crossed a turbid, swollen stream. Dismal, scrubby, half-bare trees. A lone aspen, and beyond that, amidst trees and past a vegetable garden, was a log hut that could have been an outside kitchen, a bathhouse, or the devil knows what. The whole setting was so dead and dismal that it made you want to hang yourself on the aspen by the bridge. Not a breath of wind, not a cloud moving, not a living soul. A hellish place for a living beingl

And then, imagine, the door of the log hut opened and there he was. Quite far away, but clearly visible. He looked tattered and you couldn't tell what he was wearing. His hair was disheveled, he was unshaven. His eyes looked pained and anxious. He was beckoning to her with his hand, calling to her. Choking in the dead air, Margarita started running to him over the furrowed ground, and then she woke up.

The dream can mean only one of two things, " Margarita Nikolayevna reflected. " If he's dead and was beckoning to me, that means he's come for me, and I shall die soon. That's very good, because my suffering will then end. Or, if he's alive, then the dream can only mean that he's reminding me of his existence! He wants to tell me that we'll see each other again. Yes, we'll see each other very soon."

Still excited, Margarita got dressed and tried to convince herself that, in essence, everything was turning out well, and that one had to know how to seize such opportunities and take advantage of them. Her husband had gone away on a business trip for three whole days. She had three whole days to herself, and nobody could stop her from thinking and day-dreaming about whatever she pleased. She had the whole apartment to herself, five rooms on the upper floor of a private house that would be the envy of thousands of Muscovites.

However, despite having the run of the house for three whole days, Margarita chose far from the best spot in that luxurious apartment. After drinking some tea, she went off to the dark, windowless room where the luggage was kept and where there were two large bureaus filled with various old odds and ends. She squatted down in front of the

188 The Master and Margarí a

first bureau and opened the bottom drawer. From beneath a pile of silk scraps she took out the one possession she valued most in life: an old brown leather album which contained a photograph of the Master, a savings book with ten thousand deposited in his name, dried rose petals pressed in tissue paper, and part of a typewritten manuscript that was singed at the bottom.

Returning to her bedroom with these treasures, Margarita Niko-layevna set the picture against her triple mirror and sat in front of it for an hour or so, holding the fire-damaged manuscript on her knees, as she leafed through and reread what, after the fire, had neither a beginning nor an end, "...The darkness that had come in from the Mediterranean covered the city so detested by the procurator. The hanging bridges which connected the temple with the fearsome Antonia Tower had disappeared, and an abyss descended from the sky, covering the winged gods above the hippodrome, the Hasmonaean palace and its embrasures, the bazaars, the caravanseries, alleys, and pools... Yer-shalaim—the great city—vanished as if it had never existed..."