Julie Himes - Mikhail and Margarita

The door opened and Margarita appeared. She slipped past the others and took the empty seat on the sofa. She struggled to remove her light jacket; the woman beside her helped, and she folded it across her lap and clasped her hands on top of it. Another voice called from the shadows. “Are you going to read something tonight or are we only to appreciate the spectacle of your dumbfounded wonder?” Even Margarita smiled in the warm room, dropping her eyes a little.

She’d come! He rifled through his pages again. He could impress her with the wit of his satire, his knifelike caricature. The idiocy of entrenched Moscow; the amusements of the Devil’s entourage. She would be dazzled for his genius. She was watching him, waiting with the others, her eyes shining.

In 1931 when Gogol’s body was exhumed he was discovered to be facing downward. The writer had had a terrible fear of being buried alive, so much so that he’d willed his casket be fitted with a breathing tube as well as a rope by which to sound some external bell if needed. Sadly, such wishes were viewed as the paranoia of a madman and were not implemented.

Gogol’s voice came back to him. Did you know I had a terrible infatuation of Pushkin? I called him my mentor but I wished he was otherwise. He had a most beautiful chin. I dreamt of taking it into my mouth. Alas, his life’s purpose was to catch a bullet with his spleen. I only wanted love. Is it possible that is all any of us desire?

Bulgakov began to read.

“One hot spring evening, just as the sun was going down, two men appeared at Patriarch’s Ponds…”

At its conclusion, his audience sprang from their seats, the applause was explosive. Margarita seemed to have been swallowed in their midst. He searched for her even as he was repeatedly thumped on the back, congratulations pummeling his ears. Where was she? Then he saw her! Glukharyov had pulled her to the side and was speaking intently. Bulgakov studied his lips but the voices around him were overwhelming. Yet she was there, watching Bulgakov as she listened, as though he was the only person in the room.

What was Glukaryov saying? He seemed overly serious, his hand on her arm, unwilling to spare her his prognostication. Would he convey some warning? Persuade her to look askance at writers? She looked anxious and Bulgakov parted the crowd, stepping over furniture, trying to make his way toward her. Only then did Glukharyov’s words find him—dangerous writing. Not so, Bulgakov wanted to protest. Then, so much worse—foolish risk. It was too late. He came up to them ready to drive Glukaryov into the wall.

“Well?” said Bulgakov, breathless for his emotions.

Glukharyov shook his hand; he seemed not to register Bulgakov’s acute dismay. “Great work, great work.” He leaned in. “My friend, you realize it’s not publishable.” His face was gathered in concern and apology.

Bulgakov’s exhilaration crested with this. Should he believe that Glukaryov was expert in such things? Should she believe him? Did she think she might be better off with a lesser writer? She could not! What was the point of all of this if it didn’t matter?

What did she want? She looked worried for him, but she could not retreat. She would believe whatever he wanted to believe.

But what if it was true? Bulgakov couldn’t think it!

“I’ll let you take those words back when you have a signed copy in your hands,” said Bulgakov.

Glukharyov drew up for a moment, then bowed, and the room opened before them. Bulgakov took her hand. She didn’t resist. They would step into that abyss together.

The play was ruined. Bulgakov returned home in the middle of the afternoon, too angry to remain at the theater, this thought repeating itself like some evil chorus. In the streetcar that ran the length of Tverskaya Street, the gentleman on the bench beside him only perused his newspaper. When he then nearly missed his stop, jumping up from his seat, the paper fell to the floor and Bulgakov handed it to him, adding with empathic gravity that he understood how easy it was to become distracted when they, with both great arbitration and little thought, destroyed one’s art. The man could only thank him as the tram was starting to move again.

He opened the door to his apartment. Margarita was kneeling on the table that she’d pushed against the window; various tools were laid out around her. The room was sweltering and though she wore her hair off her neck, some had escaped and lay in damp tendrils along her skin. When the window latch had failed and the window would not stay open, she’d found a neighbor willing to lend her the required tools and spent the evening and then this next day taking the mechanism apart and rebuilding it, replacing the broken bit with one she took from a basement window. Similarly when the toilet would not work she’d enlisted a plumber to repair it in exchange for tutoring sessions with his son who was sitting for university entrance examinations. Bulgakov told her how grateful he was for her, for her resourcefulness. She let him kiss her as he said these things.

The afternoon light through the dirty glass was particularly generous to her. She frowned at some part of the metal workings in her hand that would not cooperate.

Her friend Lydia sat in the armchair, her legs dangling over its side. She was an attractive girl, though she spurned all make-up and dressed severely in only trousers and shirts. As though the world need not make any excuses for her. He didn’t like her very much. It had occurred to him that Margarita might take on some of her tendencies and he was vaguely watchful for this, though what he might do if this were to happen he had no idea. Lydia fanned herself slowly with one of his magazines.

“Lydia,” he said.

“Bulgakov.” She mirrored back his cool acknowledgment. Only the magazine moved.

“Are you pretending to supervise?” he asked her. “Or do you actually know something useful to contribute?”

Margarita seemed amused by their sparring.

“I know many things,” said Lydia. “Alas, my dear friend doesn’t listen to me.”

“Lydia,” said Margarita; it was a low growl of warning.

“But I must fly now,” she added airily and pushed up from the chair.

“Care to borrow our broom?”

She ignored him and kissed Margarita. “Think about Tuesday night,” she said. She held her chin for a moment.

“I’ll think about it,” she said.

She waved a hand at Bulgakov as she passed as though batting an insect. The door closed behind her. “What’s Tuesday?” he asked.

Margarita was back at work. “Some meeting.”

“She doesn’t like me,” he said.

“I can’t imagine why not.”

But he was serious. “Are you going?” He wanted to say, You’re not going, are you? Lydia’s meetings seemed dubious things, though in truth he knew little about them.

“Do I have a better offer?” She had lowered her head before he could think of one. The window latch needed her.

“You’ve said her meetings are tedious.”

“They can be.”

“She seems to associate with questionable individuals.”

The frown returned. He changed the subject.

“Is there something I can do to help?” he said.

She seemed to give consideration to his question. “Do you have a welder’s torch?” she asked.

He shook his head.

Her hands were streaked with grime. The gadget seemed to respond and slid obediently into place.

“I think it will work now.” She rubbed her brow and it became soiled as well.

“Everything works for you,” he said.

She turned to fasten it to the window frame. She was wearing a pair of his trousers, rolled up to the knees. He liked it when she wore his clothes, her smaller form disappearing into them. She wasn’t skilled in the use of the tools, yet even they seemed to cooperate. “What happened today?” she asked.

He didn’t want to speak of the play. She would no doubt have some series of practical suggestions and he didn’t wish to argue why none of them would work.

“What makes you think something happened?” he said.

“You’re trying to pick a fight.”

“No I’m not.”

She pushed the window open; the latch grasped at the passing metal spikes, then, as she let it go, it held one fast. Abruptly, she put her head and shoulders through the opening as though she needed to be immersed in this other air, and for a moment he thought she might actually fly from it, revealing herself to be an entirely different creature than the one he knew. He was startled and excited by this thought.

She pulled her head back inside. “All right,” she said. “What have they done to it today?” The strain was gone; there was only concern. She sat on the edge of the table, waiting for him to speak. She seemed available to any question. He wanted to know why she stayed with him.

He kissed her neck. It was slick with sweat.

“You need a bath,” he said.

She slipped her hand between his thighs. “What happened?” she asked again.

Nothing, he thought, until this very moment. “I’d be lost if you left me,” he said.

She unbuttoned his shirt and began kissing his chest.

“Do you know that?” he said.

She muttered something he couldn’t understand.

He slid her across the table and she fell onto the adjacent bed. She let out a sharp noise, like the start of laughter. He toppled over beside her. She was already shimmying out of his pants. Within moments, her hands were cradling his erection as though it was some sort of religious totem.

“Do you know that?” he repeated. He held himself over her, waiting for her answer.

She smiled, her hair splayed across the pillow. “I know you’d still have a broken window,” she said.

He lowered himself over her, kissing her gently. She tightened her hold and he felt as though he could bring about the end of the world and be without blame.

Later, as she showered, he waited, lying on his back, listening to the creak of the water pipes hidden in the walls. He’d promised to take her to supper. The light in the room had shifted, deepened slightly. His thoughts unfastened themselves from the complications of the day. A small but unwieldy problem in the novel presented its solution. It slipped into place like the window latch in her hands, as though the mechanism had been there all along; it’d only required the correct pressure to be applied. He listened—the water still flowed. He got up and took the manuscript from the drawer and spread it over the table. He found the part—would this new stratagem work? He needed to know and he sat down to write.

When he raised his head, she was dressed and sitting on the bed watching him. Her expression was inscrutable. It occurred to him, as his eyes went back to the page, that its mysteries could be revealed to the person who stared long enough. Only there was a phrase he wanted to assign to the page before it eluded him. She offered to bring him something to eat.

He said something about their going out and she said it was all right.

He asked her to go by the theater and retrieve some papers he’d left behind. If it wasn’t too much trouble.

“No trouble.” Already she was at the door.

He’d let her down. He wondered how much she minded. “Marry me,” he said.

“I’ll bring you supper.” As though this was a reasonable compromise.

The evening was unusually quiet, as though all of Moscow had spent the afternoon as they had and were now relaxing in their lovers’ arms. When she got into the streetcar that would take her to the theater, there were few other passengers and she wondered about their situations as she did her own. What was the state of their love affairs? Why were they each out in this night alone? Who loved whom more, for this was never a balanced equation.

Outside, the streets and cars and buildings glowed in the evening light, yet the windows reflected the interior of the tram and in them she could see both worlds juxtaposed. Their bodies were altered, elongated in the curved glass. They were lovelorn ghosts floating through the city. They stared from the windows as she did, searching.

Lydia had told her she was too generous. She had asked, Why him?

He worried about the play. The principal actor had quit suddenly for no apparent reason. Then one of the secondaries had become pregnant with complications that confined her to bed. The director found replacements yet every problem seemed magnified in Bulgakov’s vision. Issues so small, yet she would awaken in the night to find him on the edge of their bed, his head in his hands. He would mutter, No one wants me to do this, you know. He had told her of his past: a series of theatrical failures, novels written that then were refused. Yet she sensed his lament was more personal and she felt compelled to answer. Of course she wanted him to do this. His return each day from the theater had begun to evoke in her some vague anxiety. What fabrication would she need to dispel, what problem to resolve? Night after night it seemed it was she who coaxed him back in from the ledge. What if one night she wasn’t there? Would he climb in through the window on his own? And if he didn’t? She could think it no further.