Julie Himes - Mikhail and Margarita

He lay down on the bed. He said something about being exhausted. He listened to her movements as she undressed.

Stanislawski had told him that he’d been advised by the Deputy Director of the Literary Division to commence rehearsals for an alternative production. Hamlet had been Ilya’s suggestion. One of his favorites, he’d indicated. One he was certain would be well attended, should some misfortune befall Bulgakov’s Molière.

She turned off the lamp. The mattress shifted. He sensed the discontent in her breathing; it persisted against his back even as he rolled away, pretending to sleep.

“Tell me about Margarita Nikoveyena,” said Vasily.

“I believe she is a copyeditor for the Moskovskaya pravda.”

“And her affair with the poet Osip Mandelstam?”

Bulgakov paused. “I’m not aware of a relationship. Seems unlikely, if you want my opinion.”

Bulgakov listened to the keys set ink upon the page. If only such were sufficient to imprint the past with new truths.

“There was a child, you know,” said Vasily. He shared this news as though it were casual gossip.

The air in the room seemed altered by this. “I didn’t know.” Was that his voice? No effort had gone into fabricating that answer. Here was one slim truth in a sea of lies. “What happened to it?”

Vasily glanced over the stenotype. “It died after birth,” he said.

How was it possible he’d not known this? Volumes of secrets seemed to be packed behind this one. A vision of Margarita came to him; volumes of secrets hidden by that tiny frame. All of their intimate moments seemed to flood him. The memory of each now darkened by this.

Vasily appeared to be waiting.

Bulgakov thought to say that he’d misspoken. That, yes, he’d been aware of their relationship—their love affair, to be precise. Of course, he’d known. No different than anyone else in their circle. He’d been privy to much information. He’d been important in that way. But the words that emerged spoke only of some strange sense of loss, a particular kind of betrayal, an examination of his own diminishment. “How is it that I didn’t know?” said Bulgakov.

As though Vasily might have some consoling words. He only typed.

He was finding it difficult to write.

Each night was the same, as though his dreams traveled the same rails every time he closed his eyes. He was following her. At some point, she’d pause and turn—had she heard his footsteps? But every night, her gaze passed through him as though he was a ghost in her landscape. That was when he would lose her, in twisting alleys, in a maze of hallways. In the high grasses of some foreign plain. He would call to her, but as happens in dreams, his voice froze in his throat. Then he would awaken.

“You act like there’s something you want to say to me.” She said this more than once. He would find that he’d been staring at her, unaware of the weight of his gaze. Then, as in his dreams, his voice failed him and he shook his head.

He made excuses for her. It’d happened long ago. Before they’d known each other. Of course she was allowed to maintain the privacy of those earlier years. They weren’t necessarily secrets. No doubt she didn’t consider it a secret. He imagined asking her about it, the bloom of remembrance across her face. Sadness and loss reassembling there, for certainly there had been sadness. He’d regret then having reminded her of it. He liked to believe that it was this final thought which stilled his voice. His consideration of her happiness.

When she would return from her errands he’d ask where she’d been. He tried to ask in a way that wasn’t asking.

“Were you able to find that ink by Sheaffer?” He was at the table, writing.

She put the package by his arm and kissed the top of his head.

“I knew the GUM would have it,” he said.

“I had to go to Mostorg to get it.” Her back was turned as she unloaded her shopping bag.

“That was out of your way.”

“I didn’t mind,” she said over her shoulder. “It’s fine outside.”

“You must be hungry. You haven’t eaten since breakfast.”

“I ate at Grendal’s.” She folded the empty bags and put them behind the metal cabinet. She kissed him again. “Stop talking,” she said. “You need to write.” As if it were that simple.

He didn’t tell her about Ilya and Stanislawski and Hamlet, so she was perplexed by his renewed efforts to attend Party events. He didn’t tell her that maintaining high visibility at such functions might protect his Molière. He didn’t want her to think it required his protection, as though that might diminish it in some way. She teased him that his primary interest was in the cuisine that was offered and he didn’t disagree. In the beginning, he invited her, but she always had an excuse, and he stopped.

He would ask about her plans for such evenings and at first she answered as though he was inquiring only out of politeness. He’d press for more detail and she’d ask why he was curious.

“What is interesting to you interests me,” he said.

“It’s a kind of women’s club,” she told him.

“A club for women?”

“Men can come. It’s in support of working women.” Women such as her. “You’d be surprised how many have been demoted, replaced even.”

“Will Lydia be there?”

She seemed to make light of his question, knowing his dislike for the other woman. “I’ll tell her you asked after her,” she said.

He wanted to be supportive. “It sounds like a good cause.”

“It is. She’s done an excellent job of organizing it. We have a mission statement, a charter, club officers.”

He grew somewhat uneasy. “Perhaps I’ll join,” he said.

She shook her head. “No, you won’t. But that’s all right.”

He suspected Lydia associated with undesirable types. Those more pointedly antigovernment. She’d voiced a complaint once in his presence regarding the apportionment of luxury items between those of the Party and regular citizens, and he felt defensive. “Do I live like a Party member?” he said. She didn’t answer. It occurred to him that if it happened again, he’d say nothing. He’d let her complain. He might even make notes of it. He wondered, vaguely, distantly, if he actually would. He wondered what then would follow.

“Maybe Lydia isn’t such a good person for you to associate with,” he said.

Margarita said nothing at first. The book she was reading clapped shut. She opened then closed a cabinet more firmly than needed, then seemed to stomp her feet into her shoes as she readied to leave.

“Perhaps you should come and see for yourself before assuming the worst in everyone,” she said.

“I don’t want you caught up in something that could be misinterpreted,” he said. “I’m thinking of you.”

When the door had shut and the silence returned, it was as if to remind him of what his life had been like before her.

Too often it seemed he said too much.

The evening was spent—or perhaps misspent—at the third and final lecture of a series sponsored by an organization which had named itself Wives for the People’s Advancement of Literacy. Bulgakov had missed the first two and was sorry not to have missed this final installment; he daydreamed through most of the two hour-long ramblings. The auditorium was overflowing. The speaker was a high-school principal and Soviet success story who’d nearly tripled the literacy rate in his rural district. He read directly and without pause from a loose collection of dog-eared pages, not lifting his head once, despite his effusive flattery of the regime. Margarita had said she was going to a movie with a friend and while Bulgakov at the time had silently praised himself for not pressing for the friend’s name, he wondered about it while the man rambled. Why wouldn’t she tell him? Was it Lydia? What if the friend were another man? Was her thoughtless ambiguity a real evasion? He reminded himself that he had no reason to be suspicious, yet continued to ruminate on this after the final applause.

His efforts to increase his visibility appeared to be having a positive effect. The week before he’d seen Stanislawski at the theater and for the first time in a very long while, the director had appeared relaxed, even jovial, embracing Bulgakov as though the previous burden had been lifted. Even on this night many had stopped him, speaking warmly and with anticipation about his upcoming production. There was a general buzz in the air, a shared sense of confidence about him and his work. Stanislawski no longer held late-night rehearsals of Hamlet. There were no further telegrams from Lubyanka.

Afterward, on the street, he looked about for the next streetcar. The exiting crowd jostled him. A voice at his side asked if he would consider sharing the fare of a cab.

He turned and it was Ilya. He’d not seen him earlier in the lecture hall. Bulgakov tried to appear pleased by his suggestion. He shook his head and explained that he didn’t have enough money even to share in that kind of luxury.

Inexplicably, a cab appeared and Ilya directed him into it.

“I’ll see it as my happy duty to assure you get home safely,” he said. He gave the driver Bulgakov’s address. Of course he would have known this. Ilya settled back. “What did you think of the speaker?” he said.

“Passionate,” said Bulgakov. It seemed a safe answer. He wished acutely that he could be anywhere but in that car. The driver swerved suddenly and Bulgakov’s head knocked against the window.

Ilya didn’t appear to notice. “Really? I must confess—I wasn’t listening,” he said.

Bulgakov rubbed his temple.

“Headache?” said Ilya. He smiled sympathetically. It seemed artificial and Bulgakov felt a swell of distress and anger for being forced to ride in this car with him, for the urgency of attending these insipid meetings in order to protect his work. His grievances spread—there was the new wariness he felt toward Margarita. He tried to suppress this yet he glanced at the passing sidewalk as though he might see her there with someone else. It seemed his entire world was off-balance; there was not a stable plank upon which he could set his foot.

“The French have a cure for a headache,” said Ilya.

“Yes?”

“They call it the guillotine.”

That would be relief from this ride! Who was this man? What was lacking in his life which drove such singularity of purpose? Why had he chosen Bulgakov as the target of his efforts? Bulgakov tried to imagine him as someone’s son or a brother. He tried to imagine a wife or a friend. Ilya had never given any indication that such things didn’t exist, yet somehow Bulgakov felt certain that they couldn’t. If Ilya sensed any of this, he appeared unconcerned. He stared out the side window, his poor joke forgotten, as though the purpose of this shared ride had little to do with Bulgakov.

Across the back of Ilya’s coat was a single blonde hair. Long, like a woman’s. An innocent hanger-on, deposited in the crush of strangers. It glinted in the regular pulse of passing streetlights, disappearing in the intervening darkness as though its existence could never be proven.

“They don’t even see us,” said Ilya. He spoke to the glass. He seemed to marvel at the people outside. He half-turned to Bulgakov. “But we make certain they know of us, don’t we? We have our own particular ways of making ourselves relevant to them.”

The car pulled to the side of the street opposite Bulgakov’s apartment. Above, he could see the light in his window. Margarita passed; she stopped. He saw her face in the window’s frame. Her hair was pinned up; she wore it thus when she was cleaning. She moved off again.

He was relieved she was home; more so than what he knew to be rational. He thought of the questions he would ask her, how he might phrase them. He’d ask about the film first, then about her friend’s opinion of it. Had he met this friend before? Someone she worked with? He would express interest, he hoped, rather than probing curiosity. His questions seemed a temporary solution, lines thrown to her, transient entanglements to keep her near until he could think of a better remedy.

Ilya stared at the window above. “So she stays with you,” he said.

“Some nights.” Nearly every night, he thought, though he was uncertain how that would seem.