Julie Himes - Mikhail and Margarita

The tram passed one of her favorite restaurants. She had lost weight these past weeks and had taken to pinning in the waistbands of her clothes every morning. Her friends brought in plates of bitki and kundumes and excuses that once again too much had been made for their own families. Some they ate, some went bad by sitting in the cooler for too long and had to be thrown away. Those who knew her a little suggested she take a vacation; or even better, they urged: go home and spend time with her mother.

She imagined Bulgakov at his table, his head bent over the page. Or more likely staring away at something she couldn’t see.

There were simpler men who would have loved her better.

How could she explain this to Lydia? She just needed to get used to the task. Who were those created to love the writers of the world if not the ones with a nature too generous?

The streetlamps were burning when she arrived and she was relieved to find someone still in the theater office. Margarita recognized the woman; she told her she needed an updated version of the script, then waited, sitting on one of the low, plush-covered sofas that lined the marble lobby. The lights had been dimmed. No one else was around. A series of double doors led to the empty theater. Quite suddenly, her skin prickled; to the far right, along the distant wall, she caught the movement of an animal, a large rat, making its way along the silvery floor. Its snakelike tail hovered over the tiles as it moved. She lifted her feet and tucked them beside her on the sofa. It then shot back across the room, behind a potted palm. There were voices from within the theater and a side door opened. The director Stanislawski appeared; he was speaking with great animation to another man. By his manner, the director seemed to be anxious to assist in his guest’s departure. Both were walking toward the exit; neither had noticed her. The other man turned as though vigilant of his surroundings; something the director said then distracted him from this—it was Ilya Ivanovich. She froze.

She hadn’t spoken to him since Patriarch’s Ponds. It was in his demeanor, she thought; he was there about Bulgakov. Stanislawski held open one of the heavy gilded doors so that Ilya might pass. His coat floated back across the threshold. She strained to hear their words. She thought, desperately it seemed—perhaps he was there about another writer, another play; this had nothing to do with Bulgakov. Ilya passed the line of windows. Did Bulgakov know? Was that the cause of his earlier disquiet? Ilya looked in through the glass, obliquely as though at the last moment he’d sensed her presence. He turned further and she felt a small burst of panic; then he disappeared, out of her sight. If he’d seen her, it was only for a slip of time. She waited, unable to move, expecting him to reappear, to search more carefully. Stanislawski stepped in front of her.

“My dear, you look like you’ve seen a ghost,” he said. “They say that an empty stage is never silent. Oh, what I wouldn’t give to hear again the great Nikolai Khmelev.”

She nodded as though she knew that name.

Ilya—over the last few months he’d not been entirely absent from her thoughts. There was a moment when he had entered the lobby that it seemed he’d stepped from that other shared landscape. She’d never told Bulgakov of their encounter at the Ponds. Though she’d had some sense of what he was, she told herself it had been a chance meeting. And now he’d been here as though he’d slipped past her pitiful guard.

She remembered that afternoon at Patriarch’s Ponds. It’d been overly warm; others had retreated to fanned interiors or shaded spots leaving them alone in that sun-filled place; even the woman who’d sold them the juice had kept to her kiosk. Nothing in particular had been said. Nothing had been promised; there was only the sense of occupying the same space, sharing the same sky and air. Looking back on it, as she’d done over the months, it seemed to contrast in a particular way with the loneliness she otherwise felt. As in the way one might reach into the past to reimagine the tactile quality of some childhood comfort; even if it no longer existed, it gave hope for some future comfort.

She now felt pathetic and small for its keeping.

The office worker had returned with the script and handed it to the director. He stared at it for a moment. He seemed reluctant about something.

“Tell me, my dear. Has our Bulgakov engaged in any new projects? Something perhaps,” he hesitated. “Controversial?”

She thought of Bulgakov’s reading; Glukharyov’s words to her. She shook her head.

He glanced toward the doorway. “Every production comes with a certain number of queries.” He handed her the script. “‘It’s just a play,’ I tell them.” His smile seemed strained. As though these times required one to say things one didn’t completely believe. “It’s only a play. No one should live or die over it.”

When she returned to the apartment, Bulgakov showed her a piece of paper. It was a telegram telling him to report to Lubyanka in the morning for an interview with the Deputy Director of the Literary Division. It had arrived after she’d left.

He collapsed into the chair. “It is Ilya Ivanovich. I’m certain of that.”

That name given aloud seemed itself to be an entity in the room. How could he have known?

“He was there tonight,” she said. “Talking to Stanislawski.” She thought more might tumble forth and she closed her mouth.

“That’s it,” he said. He got up then sat down again as though there was no place to go. “They are going to pull the play.”

He worried about the play? She could think of other possible outcomes, more dire ones. How was it that none of these had occurred to him? Did he not know who Ilya was? She touched the table as though it would steady her.

“Stanislawski said nothing of that,” she said.

“Well, he wouldn’t tell you, would he?” His tone was dismissive. He took the manuscript and began to search through it. When he came to a certain page, he stopped. Much of the text had already been scratched through. He turned it; nearly an entire scene had been redacted. A strange calm seemed to gather within him. “It doesn’t even make sense now.”

Oh dear God, who was this man? He was at once so vulnerable, so beautiful. Her next thought overwhelmed this—she loved him! She could let nothing happen to him. “It will be all right,” she whispered. It had to be all right. He needed to believe her.

He slid the telegram toward her. He was neither kind nor unkind. “You didn’t receive this.”

The building had been commissioned by the All-Russia Insurance Company and built in 1897 in the neo-baroque style. It rose nine stories and filled a city block. Within, its floors were laid with individually polished light and dark woods; scallop-shaped alcoves were molded into its high walls to house statuettes of alternating bronze and marble. This was the new face of Russia, commented the company’s president as he toured the structure nearing completion. He meant that a building such as this could easily be found in Berlin, or London, or even New York City, yet here it stood in this city of Tsars. He meant that a place of business could look like a palace. That no longer would the palaces belong only to the Tsars. He touched a wall as he passed, almost instinctively; then pounded the plaster with his fist. He smiled to the architect as he did this. It would stand forever, he told him. Those in his entourage laughed when he laughed.

In 1917, the secret police of the Bolshevik regime took over the building on Lubyanka Square, later renamed Dzerzhinsky, not far from Red Square, as its headquarters and prison. Forty thousand political prisoners would pass through its doors on their way to execution or exile. Citizens joked that it was the tallest building in Moscow: from its basement one could see Siberia.

When Bulgakov awoke, it was dark outside. She still slept. He lay thinking about his father’s death, the particulars of those last days. Bulgakov had been twenty-one.

It had taken the better part of a week from the time his father was last coherent. When his last words were to stop feeding him. Bulgakov had been adamant that his father was not to pass from life while unattended and his siblings and mother accepted his schedule of watches without a word. Perhaps they read into his controlling nature something akin to guilt or regret, and not wanting to interfere with those demons they did as he asked. He himself almost never left the room for those days. He wondered if his father knew he was there.

A few months before, his father had confessed to him in private about his fear. “I’m afraid,” he said simply. “I don’t want to die.” He stared into the empty hearth of his study as though some flame might appear. “There’s too much left I want to do.”

Bulgakov had been in the third year of his medical training. His visits home were short. He made excuses about the inflexibility of the hospital schedule. With each he sensed his father’s growing resentment of him, the resentment of the abandoned.

“You’re not going to die,” said Bulgakov. He shook his head in emphasis. “Your health has improved these last few months. It’s clear the condition is waning.” Bulgakov wanted to believe this. He looked to his father for affirmation. He feared his argument; he would fight any he made. He would tell him he’d live forever.

His father said nothing; his expression was introspective. Perhaps he had only wanted to confide in another person. Bulgakov had let him down yet again.

“Have you spoken with Alyosha—about this?” said Bulgakov. His father shook his head.

“My concerns are not of a spiritual nature,” he said. He regarded his son with what seemed like brief forgiveness. For not being more than the child in their relationship. “I see more of myself in you than in your brother.” As if this was some excuse for his choice.

All his father had desired was the company of his son for a few hours, conversation that might fill the drink of time with something other than his own meditations. Not long, he might have thought to say, though he didn’t.

“I wonder what your mother has planned for supper,” said his father, preparing to rise.

“I have to go back to the University,” said Bulgakov.

“Of course you do,” he said. His voice had deepened, the resentment returned.

Margarita had awakened. She pulled the sheet across her and sat on the edge of the bed. In the dim light, undressed as she was, she was stunningly vibrant.

“I’m afraid,” he said. “I’m afraid of dying.”

There was no helping it. Would she answer as he had, so many years before? Would she deny their truth, as he had done? Was it not enough that he had been so unable to bear it in his father that he avoided him entirely? Even when his father had said it plainly. Even then he had denied him altogether.

She still hadn’t moved.

“I’m afraid of disappearing,” he whispered.

“You won’t disappear.” As if by the force of her will she would maintain him.

“You can’t say that.”

She looked away and he was suddenly afraid that she’d never look at him again.

She turned back. “You’ll not disappear.” She seemed to possess new resolve.

He felt her warmth close in, skin to skin, and he thought he could never be parted from her. That would be unbearable, unthinkable. He wouldn’t think it.

He pressed her closer. She could say the words and he would believe them every time.

Like a child, he asked her to say them again.

Bulgakov arrived early at Lubyanka that morning. The foyer of the former insurance company, though several stories high and paneled in rose-colored marble, had been repurposed for office space and was a maze of desks and cabinets of various vintages that were sorely at odds with the drama of the room’s architecture. Those few who were at their desks at that hour looked at him with something between curiosity and concern. Only Committee members or their entourage used that entrance. When it was determined he was none of these he was directed to an empty row of folding chairs along the foyer’s side wall and told to wait. He sat down. A dead moth lay in the corner near his foot. He kicked it under the chair where he couldn’t see it.

On the distant wall, below the room’s peak, a large clock hung. He watched its second hand catch itself at the top of each turn about the dial, taking four to five tries, sometimes more, to achieve its apex. Bulgakov waited nearly an hour by its time then went back to the woman who’d directed him to his seat and asked if she knew her clock was broken. She requested his name and again pointed to the same row of chairs. He told her he’d already seen that view.