Margarita hung up, and here something in the next room hobbled woodenly and started beating on the door. Margarita flung it open and a sweeping broom, bristles up, flew dancing into the bedroom. It drummed on the floor with its end, kicking and straining towards the window. Margarita squealed with delight and jumped astride the broom. Only now did the thought flash in the rider that amidst all this fracas she had forgotten to get dressed. She galloped over to the bed and grabbed the first thing she found, some light blue shift. Waving it like a banner, she flew out the window. And the waltz over the garden struck up louder.
From the window Margarita slipped down and saw Nikolai Ivanovich on the bench. He seemed to have frozen to it and listened completely dumbfounded to the shouting and crashing coming from the lighted bedroom of the upstairs tenants.
‘Farewell, Nikolai Ivanovich!’ cried Margarita, capering in front of Nikolai Ivanovich.
He gasped and crawled along the bench, pawing it with his hands and knocking down his briefcase.
‘Farewell for ever! I’m flying away!’ Margarita shouted above the waltz. Here she realized that she did not need any shift, and with a sinister guffaw threw it over Nikolai Ivanovich’s head. The blinded Nikolai Ivanovich crashed from the bench on to the bricks of the path.
Margarita turned to take a last look at the house where she had suffered for so long, and saw in the blazing window Natasha’s face distorted with amazement.
‘Farewell, Natasha!’ Margarita cried and reared up on the broom. ‘Invisible! Invisible!’ she cried still louder, and, flying over the front gates, between the maple branches, which lashed at her face, she flew out into the lane. And after her flew the completely insane waltz.
CHAPTER 21
Flight
Invisible and free! Invisible and free! ... After flying down her own lane, Margarita got into another that crossed the first at right angles. This patched up, darned, crooked and long lane, with the lopsided door of a kerosene shop where they sold paraffin by the cup and liquid against parasites in flacons, she cut across in an instant, and here she realized that, even while completely free and invisible, she still had to be at least somewhat reasonable in her pleasure. Having slowed down only by some miracle, she just missed smashing herself to death against an old lopsided street light at the corner. Dodging it, Margarita clutched the broom tighter and flew more slowly, studying the electric wires and the street signs hanging across the sidewalk.
The third lane led straight to the Arbat. Here Margarita became fully accustomed to controlling the broom, realized that it obeyed the slightest touch of her hands and legs, and that, flying over the city, she had to be very attentive and not act up too much. Besides, in the lane it had already become abundantly clear that passers-by did not see the lady flier. No one threw his head back, shouted ‘Look! look!’ or dashed aside, no one shrieked, swooned or guffawed with wild laughter.
Margarita flew noiselessly, very slowly, and not high up, approximately on second-floor level. But even with this slow flying, just at the entrance to the dazzlingly lit Arbat she misjudged slightly and struck her shoulder against some illuminated disc with an arrow on it. This angered Margarita. She reined in the obedient broom, flew a little aside, and then, suddenly hurling herself at the disc with the butt of the broom, smashed it to smithereens. Bits of glass rained down with a crash, passers-by shied away, a whistle came from somewhere, and Margarita, having accomplished this unnecessary act, burst out laughing.
‘On the Arbat I must be more careful,’ thought Margarita, ‘everything’s in such a snarl here, you can’t figure it out.’ She began dodging between the wires. Beneath Margarita floated the roofs of buses, trams and cars, and along the sidewalks, as it seemed to Margarita from above, floated rivers of caps. From these rivers little streams branched off and flowed into the flaming maws of night-time shops.
‘Eh, what a mess!’ Margarita thought angrily. ‘You can’t even turn around here.’
She crossed the Arbat, rose higher, to fourth-floor level, and, past the dazzlingly bright tubes on the theatre building at the comer, floated into a narrow lane with tall buildings. All the windows in them were open, and everywhere radio music came from the windows. Out of curiosity, Margarita peeked into one of them. She saw a kitchen. Two primuses were roaring on the range, and next to them stood two women with spoons in their hands, squabbling.
‘You should turn the toilet light off after you, that’s what I’m telling you, Pelageya Petrovna,’ said the woman before whom there was a pot with some sort of eatables steaming in it, ‘or else we’ll apply to have you evicted.’
‘You’re a good one yourself,’ the other woman answered.
‘You’re both good ones,’ Margarita said loudly, clambering over the window-sill into the kitchen.
The two quarrelling women turned towards the voice and froze with their dirty spoons in their hands. Margarita carefully reached out between them, turned the knobs of both primuses, and extinguished them. The women gasped and opened their mouths. But Margarita was already bored with the kitchen and flew out into the lane.
Her attention was attracted by the magnificent hulk of an eight-storeyed, obviously just-constructed building at the end of it. Margarita dropped down and, alighting, saw that the façade of the building was covered in black marble, that the doors were wide, that behind their glass could be glimpsed a doorman’s buttons and peaked cap with gold braid, and that over the door there was a gold inscription: ‘Dramlit House’.
Margarita squinted at the inscription, trying to figure out what the word ‘Dramlit’ might mean. Taking her broom under her arm, Margarita walked into the lobby, shoving the surprised doorman with the door, and saw on the wall beside the elevator a huge black board and on it, written in white letters, apartment numbers and tenants’ names. The heading ’House of Dramatists and Literary Workers’ above the list provoked a suppressed predatory scream in Margarita. Rising in the air, she greedily began to read the last names: Khustov, Dvubratsky, Quant, Beskudnikov, Latunsky ...
‘Latunsky!’ shrieked Margarita. ‘Latunsky! Why, he’s the one ... he’s the one who ruined the master!’
The doorman at the entrance, even hopping with astonishment, his eyes rolled out, gazed at the black board, trying to understand the marveclass="underline" why was the list of tenants suddenly shrieking?
But by that time Margarita was already going impetuously up the stairs, repeating in some sort of rapture:
‘Latunsky eighty-four ... Latunsky eighty-four ...’
Here to the left - 82, to the right - 83, further up, to the left - 84! Here! And the name plate - ‘O. Latunsky’.
Margarita jumped off the broom, and her hot soles felt the pleasant coolness of the stone landing. Margarita rang once, twice. But no one opened. Margarita began to push the button harder and could hear the jangling it set off in Latunsky’s apartment. Yes, to his dying day the inhabitant of apartment no. 84 on the eighth floor should be grateful to the late Berlioz, chairman of Massolit, for having fallen under a tram-car, and that the memorial gathering had been appointed precisely for that evening. The critic Latunsky was born under a lucky star — it saved him from meeting Margarita, who that Friday became a witch.
No one opened the door. Then Margarita raced down at full swing, counting the floors, reached the bottom, burst out the door and, looking up, counted and checked the floors from outside, guessing which precisely were the windows of Latunsky’s apartment. Undoubtedly they were the five dark windows at the comer of the building on the eighth floor. Convinced of it, Margarita rose into the air and in a few seconds was stepping through an open window into an unlit room, where only a narrow path from the moon shone silver. Margarita ran down it, felt for the switch. A moment later the whole apartment was lit up. The broom stood in a comer. After making sure that no one was home, Margarita opened the door to the stairs and checked whether the name plate was there. The name plate was in place. Margarita was where she wanted to be.