“I caught a glimpse of that individual in your office yesterday, but one cursory glance at his face is sufficient to realize that he’s a bastard, a troublemaker, a time-server and a toady.”

“Quite correct!” thought Styopa, amazed at such a true, accurate and concise definition of Khustov.

Yes, the previous day was being pieced together, but even so, uneasiness was not abandoning the Director of the Variety. The thing was that in that previous day there yawned an absolutely enormous black hole. Now this here stranger in the beret, say whatever you like, Styopa had definitely not seen him in his office yesterday.

“Woland,^[202] Professor of Black Magic,” the caller said weightily, seeing Styopa’s difficulties, and he recounted everything in order.

Yesterday afternoon he had arrived in Moscow from abroad, and had immediately presented himself to Styopa and proposed his temporary engagement at the Variety. Styopa had rung the Moscow District Spectacles Commission^[203] and submitted the question for approval (Styopa blenched and began blinking), had signed a contract with Professor Woland for seven shows (Styopa opened his mouth), had arranged that Woland should call on him to specify the details further at ten o’clock in the morning today… And so here Woland was. On arrival he had been met by the maid, Grunya, who had explained that she had only just arrived herself, that she was non-resident, that Berlioz was not at home, and that if the caller wished to see Stepan Bogdanovich, then he should go through into the bedroom himself. Stepan Bogdanovich was sleeping so soundly, she would not take it upon herself to wake him. Seeing the condition Stepan Bogdanovich was in, the artiste had sent Grunya to the nearest grocer’s for the vodka and the food, to the chemist’s for the ice, and.

“Allow me to settle up^[204] with you,” the crushed Styopa whimpered, and began searching for his wallet.

“Oh, what nonsense!” exclaimed the touring artiste, and would hear no more of it.

And so the vodka and the food became clear, but all the same Styopa was a sad sight to see; he certainly could not remember anything about a contract, and had not seen this Woland on the previous day for the life of him. Yes, Khustov there had been, but Woland there had not.

“Permit me to take a look at the contract,” Styopa requested quietly.

“Certainly, certainly…”

Styopa glanced at the document and went numb. Everything was in place. Firstly, Styopa’s devil-may-care^[205] signature in his own writing! A slanting inscription to the side in the hand of the Financial Director, Rimsky, with permission to pay out ten thousand roubles to the artiste Woland against the thirty-five thousand roubles due to him for seven performances. What is more, here too was Woland’s signature to the effect that he had already received the ten thousand!

“What on earth is this?” thought the unhappy Styopa, and his head began to spin. Is this the start of ominous memory lapses^[206]?! But it goes without saying that after the contract had been produced, further expressions of surprise would have been simply improper. Styopa asked permission of his guest to absent himself for a moment, and just as he was, in his socks, he ran to the telephone in the hall. On the way he shouted in the direction of the kitchen:

“Grunya!”

But no one responded. At this point he glanced at the door of Berlioz’s study, which was next to the hall, and at this point he became, as they say, rooted to the spot. On the door handle he could make out the most enormous wax seal on a string.^[207] “Hello!” somebody roared inside Styopa’s head. “That’s all I need!” And at this point Styopa’s thoughts started running along what was now a double track, but, as is always the way during a catastrophe, in just the one direction and, all in all, the devil knows where. It is difficult even to convey the muddle inside Styopa’s head. There was this devilish business with the black beret, the cold vodka and the incredible contract – and now, to add to all that, if you please, a seal on the door! That is to say, tell anyone you like that Berlioz had done something wrong, and he wouldn’t believe it – honest to God, he would not believe it! And yet the seal, there it is! Yes, sir. Yes indeed…

And at this point there began to stir in Styopa’s brain some most unpleasant little thoughts about an article which, as ill luck would have it, he had recently forced upon Mikhail Alexandrovich to be printed in his journal. An idiotic article too, between ourselves! Pointless, and the money wasn’t much.

Following immediately upon the recollection of the article, the recollection came flying in of some dubious conversation that had taken place, as he recalled, on the twenty-fourth of April, in the evening, right here, in the dining room, while Styopa had been having dinner with Mikhail Alexandrovich. That is to say, of course, in the full sense of the word this conversation could not have been called dubious (Styopa would not have entered into such a conversation), but it had been a conversation on some needless subject. They could perfectly freely not have embarked upon it^[208] at all, Citizens. Before the seal, there is no doubt, that conversation could have been considered utterly trifling, but now, after the seal.

“Oh, Berlioz, Berlioz!” it came boiling up in Styopa’s head. “I just can’t believe it!”

But this was not the occasion to spend a long time grieving, and Styopa dialled the office number of the Variety’s Financial Director, Rimsky. Styopa’s position was a ticklish one: firstly, the foreigner might be offended by Styopa checking up on him after the contract had been shown, and talking to the Financial Director was extremely difficult too. After all, you really wouldn’t just ask him like this: “Tell me, did I draw up a contract with a Professor of Black Magic for thirty-five thousand roubles yesterday?” It wouldn’t do to ask like that!

“Yes!” Rimsky’s abrupt, unpleasant voice was heard in the receiver.

“Hello, Grigory Danilovich,” Styopa began quietly, “it’s Likhodeyev. Why I’m ringing is… hm. hm. I’ve got this. er… artiste Woland here with me. The thing is. I wanted to ask how things were with regard to this evening?”

“Ah, the black magician?” Rimsky responded in the receiver.

“The playbills will be here at any moment.”

“Aha,” said Styopa in a weak voice, “see you, then…”

“Will you be here soon?” asked Rimsky.

“In half an hour,” Styopa replied and, hanging up, squeezed his hot head in his hands. Oh, what a nasty business this was developing into! Whatever was the matter with his memory, Citizens? Eh?

However, it was awkward to linger in the hall any longer, and Styopa drew up a plan on the spot: use all possible means to conceal his unbelievable forgetfulness, and now, first and foremost, slyly enquire of the foreigner what he was actually intending to do in his show at the Variety, the theatre entrusted to Styopa.

At this point Styopa turned away from the telephone, and in the mirror located in the hall, which the lazy Grunya had not wiped for a long time, he distinctly saw a strange sort of character – lanky as a lath and wearing a pincenez (ah, if only Ivan Nikolayevich had been there! He would have recognized this character straight away!) But his reflection was there, and then immediately vanished. In alarm, Styopa looked a little deeper into the hall, and he was rocked for a second time, for there in the mirror the most strapping black cat passed by, then vanished too.

Styopa’s heart missed a beat; he reeled.

“What on earth is going on?” he thought. “I’m not losing my mind, am I? Where are these reflections coming from?” He looked into the hall and cried out in fright:

“Grunya! What’s this cat we’ve got wandering around^[209]? Where’s it from? And someone else too?!”

“Don’t worry, Stepan Bogdanovich,” answered a voice, only not Grunya’s, but the guest’s from the bedroom. “The cat is mine. Don’t fret. And Grunya’s not here, I sent her off to Voronezh. She was complaining that you’d not given her any leave for a long time now.”

These words were so unexpected and absurd that Styopa decided he had misheard. In utter confusion he trotted to the bedroom and froze on the threshold. His hair stirred, and on his forehead there appeared a sprinkling of tiny drops of sweat.

The guest was no longer alone in the bedroom, but in company. In the second armchair sat that same fellow who had been seen dimly in the hall. Now he was clearly visible: a feathery moustache, one lens of the pince-nez gleaming and the other lens missing. But there proved to be even worse things in the bedroom: on the jeweller’s wife’s pouffe there lounged in a free-and-easy pose a third figure – namely, a black cat of awesome dimensions with a shot glass of vodka in one paw and a fork, on which he had managed to spear a pickled mushroom, in the other.

The light, weak in the bedroom as it was, began to fade completely in Styopa’s eyes. “So it turns out that this is how you go mad!” he thought, and grabbed hold of the doorpost.

“I see you’re a little surprised, dearest Stepan Bogdanovich?” enquired Woland of Styopa, whose teeth were chattering. “And yet there’s nothing to be surprised about. This is my retinue.”

At this point the cat drank the vodka, and Styopa’s hand slipped down the doorpost.

“And the retinue needs room,” continued Woland, “so there’s one too many of us here in the apartment. And it seems to me that the one too many… is specifically you!”

“Them, them!” the lanky one in checks began bleating like a goat, talking about Styopa in the plural. “Generally they’ve been acting like dreadful pigs of late. Drinking heavily, using their position to form liaisons with women, doing damn all – well, they can’t actually do anything, because they don’t understand a thing about what they’re charged to do. Pulling the wool over their superiors’ eyes^[210]!”

“He misuses an official car!” the cat snitched on him, chewing a mushroom.

And at this point there was a fourth and final appearance in the apartment, while Styopa, who had by now slipped down completely onto the floor, was scratching at the doorpost with a weakened hand.

Straight from the mirror of the cheval glass there emerged a small but unusually broad-shouldered man with a bowler hat on his head and, sticking out of his mouth, a fang, which disfigured a physiognomy that was already of unprecedented loathsomeness. And with fiery red hair besides.

“I,” this newcomer entered into the conversation, “don’t understand at all how he came to be a director” – the red-headed man’s voice became more and more nasal – “he’s as much a director as I’m an archbishop!”

“You’re nothing like an archbishop, Azazello,” remarked the cat, putting some sausages on his plate.

“That’s what I’m saying,” said the red-headed man nasally and, turning to Woland, he added deferentially: “Will you allow us, Messire,^[211][212] to damn well chuck him out of Moscow^[213]?”

“Shoo!” the cat suddenly roared, with his fur standing on end.

And then the bedroom began spinning around Styopa, and he struck his head on the doorpost, and, as he lost consciousness, he thought: “I’m dying…”

But he did not die. Opening his eyes a little, he saw himself sitting on something made of stone. There was something making a noise all around him. When he opened his eyes up properly, he realized it was the sea making the noise and – even more than that – the waves were rising and falling right at his feet; in short, he was sitting at the very end of a mole; above him was the glittering blue sky and, behind, a white town in the mountains.

Not knowing how people behave in such situations, Styopa rose on shaky legs and set off down the mole towards the shore.

On the mole stood some man or other, smoking and spitting into the sea. He looked at Styopa wild-eyed, and stopped spitting.

Then Styopa came out with the following trick: he knelt down before the unknown smoker and uttered:

“Tell me, I beg you, what town is this?”

“Well, really!” said the heartless smoker.

“I’m not drunk,” replied Styopa hoarsely, “something’s happened to me. I’m ill. Where am I? What town is it?”

“Well, it’s Yalta.”

Styopa sighed quietly, toppled onto his side and struck his head on the warm stone of the mole. Consciousness left him.