The Master and Margarita. Chest, not looking at the moon and taking no interest in the earth below, but, rather, completely immersed in his own thoughts.

Chest, not looking at the moon and taking no interest in the earth below, but, rather, completely immersed in his own thoughts.

" Why is he so changed? " Margarita softly asked Woland to the whistling of the wind.

" That knight once made a joke that fell flat, " replied Woland, turning his quietly smoldering eye toward Margarita. " While conversing about darkness and light he made up a pun that was not entirely satisfactory. And after that, he was forced to work a bit longer and harder at making his jokes than he imagined. But tonight is the kind of night when accounts are settled. The knight has paid his bill and closed his account! "

Night had also torn off Behemoth's fluffy tail, stripped him of his fur and scattered clumps of it over the swamps. The one who had been the cat who amused the Prince of Darkness turned out to be a lean youth, a demon-page, the best jester the world has ever known. Now he, too, had fallen silent and was flying noiselessly, his young face raised to the light flowing from the moon.

Over to the side of the rest, the steel of his armor gleaming, flew Azazello. The moon had transformed his face as well. The absurd ugly fang was gone, and the blind eye turned out to have been fake. Both Azazello's eyes were alike, empty and black, and his face was cold and white. Azazello was now flying in his true aspect, as the demon of the waterless desert, the demon-killer.

Margarita could not see herself, but she could certainly see how the Master had changed. His hair looked white in the moonlight and was gathered behind him in a queue that flew in the wind. Whenever the wind blew the Master's cloak away from his legs, Margarita could see the stars flickering on the spurs of his jackboots. Like the demon-youth, the Master flew with his eyes fixed on the moon, but he was smiling at it as if it were someone he knew and loved, and he was mumbling to himself, a habit acquired in Room 118.

And finally, Woland, too, was flying in his true aspect. Margarita could not have said what his horse's reins were made of and thought they might have been moonbeam chains, and his horse—just a clump of darkness, and the horse's mane—a cloud, and the rider's spurs—the white specks of stars.

They flew in silence like that for a long time until the landscape below began to change. The mournful forests drowned in the darkness of the earth, taking with them the dull blades of the rivers. Down below boulders appeared, and began giving off reflections, and in between the boulders were gaps of blackness where the moonlight could not penetrate.

Woland set his horse down on a stony, joyless, flat summit, and then the riders went forward at a walk, listening to the clop of their horses' hooves on the stones and pieces of flint. The moon flooded the area with a bright green light, and in the deserted expanse Margarita could make out an armchair and in it the white figure of a seated man. The

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Seated figure appeared to be either deaf or too sunk in thought. He did not hear the ground trembling under the weight of the horses, nor was he disturbed by the approaching riders.

The moon was a great help to Margarita, it gave better light than the most powerful electric street lamp, and Margarita saw that the seated figure, whose eyes seemed blind, was spasmodically rubbing his hands and gazing with unseeing eyes at the disk of the moon. Now Margarita could see that next to the heavy stone chair, which seemed to sparkle in the moonlight, there lay a huge dark dog with pointed ears who, like his master, was gazing anxiously at the moon. At the feet of the seated figure were shards of a broken jug and a blackish-red puddle that would never dry up.