‘We’re delighted,’ howled the cat.
The young men, Azazello’s companions, smiling lifeless but affable smiles, were already shouldering Monsieur Jacques and his spouse to one side, towards the cups of champagne that the negroes were holding. The single man in the tailcoat was coming up the stairs at a run.
‘Earl Robert,’[121] Koroviev whispered to Margarita, ‘interesting as ever. Note how funny, Queen: the reverse case, this one was a queen’s lover and poisoned his wife.’
‘We’re very glad, Earl,’ cried Behemoth.
Out of the fireplace, bursting open and falling apart, three coffins tumbled one after another, then came someone in a black mantle, whom the next one to run out of the black maw stabbed in the back with a knife. A stifled cry was heard from below. An almost entirely decomposed corpse ran out of the fireplace. Margarita shut her eyes, and someone’s hand held a flacon of smelling salts to her nose. Margarita thought the hand was Natasha’s.
The stairway began to fill up. Now on each step there were tailcoaters, looking quite alike from afar, and naked women with them, who differed from each other only in the colour of their shoes and of the feathers on their heads.
Coming towards Margarita, hobbling, a strange wooden boot on her left foot, was a lady with nunnishly lowered eyes, thin and modest, and with a wide green band around her neck for some reason.
‘Who is this ... green one?’ Margarita asked mechanically.
‘A most charming and respectable lady,’ whispered Koroviev, ‘I commend her to you: Madame Tofana.[122] Extremely popular among young, lovely Neapolitans, as well as the ladies of Palermo, especially those of them who had grown weary of their husbands. It does happen, Queen, that one grows weary of one’s husband ...’
‘Yes,’ Margarita replied in a hollow voice, smiling at the same time to two tailcoaters who bent before her one after the other, kissing her knee and hand.
‘And so,’ Koroviev managed to whisper to Margarita and at the same time to cry out to someone: ‘Duke! A glass of champagne? I’m delighted! ... Yes, so then, Madame Tofana entered into the situation of these poor women and sold them some sort of water in little vials. The wife poured this water into her spouse’s soup, he ate it, thanked her for being so nice, and felt perfectly well. True, a few hours later he would begin to get very thirsty, then go to bed, and a day later the lovely Neapolitan who had fed her husband soup would be free as the spring breeze.’
‘But what’s that on her foot?’ asked Margarita, tirelessly offering her hand to the guests who came ahead of the hobbling Madame Tofana. ‘And why that green band? A withered neck?’
‘Delighted, Prince!’ cried Koroviev, and at the same time whispered to Margarita: ‘A beautiful neck, but an unpleasantness happened to her in prison. What she has on her foot, Queen, is a Spanish boot,[123] and the band is explained this way: when the prison guards learned that some five hundred ill-chosen husbands had departed Naples and Palermo for ever, in the heat of the moment they strangled Madame Tofana in prison.’
‘How happy I am, O kindest Queen, that the high honour has fallen to me ...’ Tofana whispered nunnishly, trying to lower herself to one knee — the Spanish boot hindered her. Koroviev and Behemoth helped her up.
‘I’m very glad,’ Margarita answered her, at the same time offering her hand to others.
Now a steady stream was coming up the stairs from below. Margarita could no longer see what was going on in the front hall. She mechanically raised and lowered her hand and smiled uniformly to the guests. There was a hum in the air on the landing; from the ballrooms Margarita had left, music could be heard, like the sea.
‘But this one is a boring woman,’ Koroviev no longer whispered, but spoke aloud, knowing that in the hubbub of voices no one would hear him. ‘She adores balls, and keeps dreaming of complaining about her handkerchief.’
Margarita’s glance picked out among those coming up the woman at whom Koroviev was pointing. She was young, about twenty, of remarkably beautiful figure, but with somehow restless and importunate eyes.
‘What handkerchief?’ asked Margarita.
‘She has a chambermaid assigned to her,’ explained Koroviev, ‘who for thirty years has been putting a handkerchief on her night table during the night. She wakes up and the handkerchief is there. She’s tried burning it in the stove and drowning it in the river, but nothing helps.’
‘What handkerchief?’ whispered Margarita, raising and lowering her arm.
‘A blue-bordered one. The thing is that when she worked in a café, the owner once invited her to the pantry, and nine months later she gave birth to a boy, took him to the forest, stuffed the handkerchief into his mouth, and then buried the boy in the ground. At the trial she said she had no way of feeding the child.’
‘And where is the owner of the café?’ asked Margarita.
‘Queen,’ the cat suddenly creaked from below, ‘what, may I ask, does the owner have to do with it? It wasn’t he who smothered the infant in the forest!’
Margarita, without ceasing to smile and proffer her right hand, dug the sharp nails of the left into Behemoth’s ear and whispered to him:
‘If you, scum, allow yourself to interfere in the conversation again ...’
Behemoth squeaked in a not very ball-like fashion and rasped:
‘Queen ... the ear will get swollen ... why spoil the ball with a swollen ear? ... I was speaking legally, from the legal point of view ... I say no more, I say no more. Consider me not a cat but a post, only let go of my ear!’
Margarita released his ear, and the importunate, gloomy eyes were before her.
‘I am happy, Queen-hostess, to be invited to the great ball of the full moon!’
‘And I am glad to see you,’ Margarita answered her, ‘very glad. Do you like champagne?’
‘What are you doing, Queen?!’ Koroviev cried desperately but soundlessly in Margarita’s ear. ‘There’ll be a traffic jam!’
‘Yes, I do,’ the woman said imploringly, and suddenly began repeating mechanically: ‘Frieda,[124] Frieda, Frieda! My name is Frieda, Queen!’
‘Get drunk tonight, Frieda, and don’t think about anything,’ said Margarita.
Frieda reached out both arms to Margarita, but Koroviev and Behemoth very adroitly took her under the arms and she blended into the crowd.
Now people were coming in a solid wall from below, as if storming the landing where Margarita stood. Naked women’s bodies came up between tailcoated men. Their swarthy, white, coffee-bean-coloured, and altogether black bodies floated towards Margarita. In their hair - red, black, chestnut, light as flax - precious stones glittered and danced, spraying sparkles into the flood of light. And as if someone had sprinkled the storming column of men with droplets of light, diamond studs sprayed light from their chests. Every second now Margarita felt lips touch her knee, every second she held out her hand to be kissed, her face was contracted into a fixed mask of greeting.
‘I’m delighted,’ Koroviev sang monotonously, ‘we’re delighted ... the queen is delighted ...’
‘The queen is delighted ...’ Azazello echoed nasally behind her back.
‘I’m delighted!’ the cat kept exclaiming.
‘The marquise..,’[125] muttered Koroviev, ‘poisoned her father, two brothers and two sisters for the inheritance ... The queen is delighted! ... Madame Minkin ...[126] Ah, what a beauty! A bit nervous. Why burn the maid’s face with the curling-irons? Of course, in such conditions one gets stabbed ... The queen is delighted! ... Queen, one second of attention! The emperor Rudolf[127] — sorcerer and alchemist ... Another alchemist - got hanged ... Ah, here she is! Ah, what a wonderful brothel she ran in Strasbourg! ... We’re delighted! ... A Moscow dressmaker,[128] we all love her for her inexhaustible fantasy ... She kept a shop and invented a terribly funny trick: drilled two round holes in the wall ...’
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