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The riders stopped their horses.
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" They have read your novel, " began Woland, turning to the Master, " and they said only one thing, that, unfortunately, it is not finished. So I wanted to show you your hero. He has been sitting here for about two thousand years, sleeping, but, when the moon is full, he is tormented, as you see, by insomnia. And it torments not only him, but his faithful guardian, the dog. If it is true that cowardice is the most grave vice, then the dog, at least, is not guilty of it. The only thing that brave creature ever feared was thunderstorms. But what can be done, the one who loves must share the fate of the one he loves."
" What is he saying? " asked Margarita, and her utterly tranquil face was covered by a veil of compassion.
" He says, " Woland's voice rang out, " the same thing over and over. That the moon gives him no peace and that he has a bad job. That is what he always says when he cannot sleep, and when he does sleep, he always sees the same thing—a path of moonlight, and he wants to walk on that path, and talk with the prisoner Ha-Notsri, because, as he keeps maintaining, he did not finish what he wanted to say long ago, on the fourteenth day of the spring month of Nisan. But, alas, for some reason, he never does manage to walk on the path, and no one comes to see him. So there is nothing for him to do except talk to himself. Some variety is necessary, however, so when he talks about the moon, he frequently adds that he hates his immortality and unprecedented fame more than anything in the world. He maintains that he would gladly change places with the ragged wanderer, Levi Matvei."
" Twelve thousand moons for that one moon long ago, isn't that too much? " asked Margarita.
" Is this that story with Frieda all over again? " said Woland. " But in this case, Margarita, you need not upset yourself. Everything will be made right, that is what the world is built on."
" Let him go, " suddenly shouted Margarita piercingly, just as she had shouted when she was a witch, and her cry dislodged a boulder on the mountainside and sent it hurtling down the slopes into the abyss with
324 The Master and Margarita
a thunderous crash. But Margarita could not tell whether it was the crash of the boulder she heard or the thunder of Satanic laughter. In any event, Woland was laughing as he looked at Margarita and said, " One must not shout when in the mountains. Anyway, he's used to avalanches, and it won't disturb him. You need not plead for him, Margarita, because the one he wants to talk with already has." Woland again turned to the Master and said, " Well, then, now you can finish your novel with a single sentence! "
The Master seemed to have been waiting for this as he stood motionless, looking at the seated procurator. He cupped his hands over his mouth like a megaphone and shouted so that the echo rebounded over the desolate and treeless mountains. " Free! Free! He is waiting for you! "
The mountains transformed the Master's voice into thunder, and the thunder destroyed them. The accursed rocky walls caved in. The only thing that remained was the summit with the stone chair. Above the black abyss, where the walls had vanished, blazed a vast city dominated by glittering idols that towered over a garden gone luxuriantly to seed during these thousands of moons. The path of moonlight long awaited by the procurator led right up to the garden, and the dog with the pointed ears was the first to rush out on it. The man in the white cloak with the blood-red lining got up from his chair and shouted something in a hoarse, broken voice. It was impossible to make out whether he was laughing or crying, or what he was shouting, but he could be seen running down the path of moonlight, after his faithful guardian.
" Is that where I'm to go? " asked the Master anxiously, touching his reins.
" No, " replied Woland. " Why pursue that which is already finished? "
" Does that mean back there then? " asked the Master, who turned and pointed back to where the city they had just left displayed itself with ¡ is gingerbread monastery towers and its sun broken to smithereens in the glass.
" Not there either, " replied Woland, and his voice thickened and began to flow over the cliffs. " Romantic Master! The one whom the hero you created and just released so yearned to see has read your novel." Here Woland turned to Margarita and said, " Margarita Niko-layevnal It is impossible not to believe that you tried to devise the best possible future for the Master, but I assure you that what I am offering you, and what Yeshua has requested for you, is better still. Let the two of them be alone, " said Woland, leaning across his saddle over to the Master's saddle and pointing toward the departed procurator. " Let's not disturb them. Maybe they will come to some agreement." Woland then waved his hand toward Yershalaim, and it was extinguished.
" And there too, " said Woland, pointing backward. " What would you do in your little basement? " The fragmented sun dimmed in the glass. " Why go back? " continued Woland in a firm and gentle voice. " O
Absolution and Eternal Refuge 325
Master, thrice a romande, wouldn't you like to stroll with your beloved under the blossoming cherry trees by day and then listen to Schubert by night? Wouldn't it be nice for you to write by candlelight with a quill pen? Wouldn't you like to sit over a retort, like Faust, in the hope of creating a new homunculus? Go there! Go there! There where a house and an old servant already await you, where the candles are already burning, but will soon go out because you are about to meet the dawn. Take that road, Master, that one! Farewell! It is time for me to go."
" Farewell! " shouted Margarita and the Master in reply to Woland. Then the black Woland, forswearing all roads, plunged into the gap, and his retinue noisily rushed down after him. Nothing remained around them, not the cliffs, nor the summit, nor the path of moonlight, nor Yershalaim. The black horses vanished as well. The Master and Margarita saw the promised dawn. It began immediately, right after the midnight moon. In the radiance of the first rays of morning, the Master and his beloved were walking over a small, moss-covered stone bridge. They crossed the bridge. The stream was left behind by the true lovers, and they walked along a sandy path.
" Listen to the silence, " Margarita was saying to the Master, the sand crunching under her bare feet. " Listen and take pleasure in what you were not given in life—quiet. Look, there up ahead is your eternal home, which you've been given as a reward. I can see the Venetian window and the grape-vine curling up to the roof. There is your home, your eternal home. I know that in the evenings people you like will come to see you, people who interest you and who will not upset you. They will play for you, sing for you, and you will see how the room looks in candlelight. You wUl fall asleep with your grimy eternal cap on your head, you will fall asleep with a smile on your lips. Sleep will strengthen you, you will begin to reason wisely. And you will never be able to chase me away. I will guard your sleep."
Thus spoke Margarita as she walked with the Master toward their eternal home, and it seemed to the Master that Margarita's words flowed like the stream they had left behind, flowed and whispered, and the Master's anxious, needle-pricked memory began to fade. Someone was releasing the Master into freedom, as he himself had released the hero he created. That hero, who was absolved on Sunday morning, had departed into the abyss, never to return, the son of an astrologer-king, the cruel fifth procurator of Judea, the knight Pontius Pilate.
Epilogue
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UT still, what happened next in Moscow after that Saturday evening at sunset when Woland and his retinue left the capital and disappeared from Sparrow Hills?
It's pointless to speak of the preposterous rumors that buzzed loudly and long throughout the city and spread quickly to the most distant and remote parts of the provinces. It's even sickening to repeat them.
The writer of these truthful lines has himself heard, while on a train to Feodosiya, a story about how in Moscow two thousand people walked out of a theater naked in the literal sense of the word and then went home in taxis in the same state.
Whispers of an " evil power" were heard in lines at dairy shops, in streetcars, stores, apartments, kitchens, suburban and long-distance trains, at stations large and small, in dachas, and on beaches.
Needless to say, truly mature and cultured people did not tell these stories about an evil power's visit to the capital. In fact, they even made fun of them and tried to talk sense into those who told them. Nevertheless, facts are facts, as they say, and cannot simply be dismissed without explanation: somebody had visited the capital. The charred cinders of Griboyedov alone, and many other things besides, confirmed that.
Cultured people shared the point of view of the investigating team: it was the work of a gang of hypnotists and ventriloquists magniftcently skilled in their art.
Both inside Moscow and beyond, prompt and energetic steps were, of course, taken to insure their capture, but, most regrettably, produced no results. The man who called himself Woland vanished along with his henchmen and never again returned to Moscow nor did he ever show himself or make an appearance anywhere else. Quite naturally there was speculation that he had escaped abroad, but he never showed up there either.