Julie Himes - Mikhail and Margarita

That she knew how utterly unfair she was being.

She turned back. Her vision had darkened from the glare of the snow.

“I can’t go with you,” she said.

She could not know what he read on her face. His appeared to have greatly aged. He had carried on for both of them long enough; she would have to want this too. He looked away; it seemed he could no longer bear the sight of her. He stepped from the door as though this was his choice.

The platform was deserted. An attendant suggested she hurry; the train would soon depart. She went inside the depot; the benches were empty. A child’s mitten, a scrap of paper. No soldiers—as though she’d been forgotten. She paused in the spot where Bulgakov had stood.

Once she’d suggested to Mandelstam that she should write poetry. He’d laughed at her, not unkindly. What on earth would she write about, he’d asked. He’d drilled a finger into her shoulder. You need to have died a bit, he’d told her. Maybe died a lot. He’d kissed her then, as if to say, enjoy your aliveness. One writes not because he wants to.

She went outside toward the street; it was bright and crowded with wagons and cars and people. A horn sounded, then another. It was bitter cold. She searched for soldiers or police and saw none. A man’s coat brushed her arm. There were fragments of conversations. She pulled the cap from her head; her hair spilled about her shoulders. No one noticed.

The edge of the street was black from the collected soot of a city. An old newspaper lay at her feet, its print damp. A photograph of officials stared past her. Something about the opening of a bridge in a distant region. They had called it a triumph of the People.

Someone grabbed her arm. It was an older woman, her head covered in a faded print kerchief. She searched Margarita’s face; her own was crossed by fine lines from years of sun; it was both disappointed and unrelenting. “I thought you were my sister,” she said, as though still unconvinced that it could not be her. She released Margarita’s arm and disappeared into the crowd. Margarita wondered if the woman had lost sight of her sister only moments before, or if it’d been many years. She still felt the pressure of her fingers through her clothes.

She could be someone’s sister, someone’s daughter. Someone’s wife. She examined the faces of those around her. Most were preoccupied, indifferent. A few paused at her gaze; she could be anyone and in that they seemed untroubled. A taxi driver motioned hopefully to the door of his vehicle but she shook her head and went into the street.

The men in the photograph watched her pass; if only they had been able to see beyond the camera’s lens that day. They would have applauded her if they could.

Ilya watched the passing landscape from the train carriage. He sensed a change in the inertial force as it began to slow. They were still miles from the Mongolian border. There were no trees, only a vast golden plain, distant snowy mountains, and empty sky. It was easy to believe in a curious god, watching from above.

The train was stopped for five hours at the border. It was night; intermittent lights shone along the platform. There were interior lights from the station house. Ilya guessed a barracks adjacent to that. A handful of other smaller buildings. Beyond these, impenetrable darkness. Perhaps this god had lost interest.

There was a knock on the carriage door. A young soldier asked to see his papers. He traced a small light over the print, then handed them back. He glanced at Ilya as though he should recognize him, then quickly away. As though the form of this man had been altered, perhaps by fire or another past trauma, and though well healed, the soldier was unsettled by it. Later, the soldier would believe that it had been the poor light which had made for the sense of unworldliness. In any case, this was not the man for whom they’d been searching; earlier that day they’d been told that he’d been found.

A short time later the train pulled away from the station. The lights in the window retreated, leaving only Ilya’s reflection. He turned down the lamp as though he would sleep.

He and Pavel had been fishing. It was late spring with the water at its highest and Pavel had ventured in too far. He laughed the first time he slipped as though this was a game between him and the rapids. He gave no shout of surprise when he disappeared. Ilya had thought, if he’d looked away at that moment, it would be as if he’d never had a brother. Ilya called to him; tossed aside his rod and clambered in, his voice lost to the pounding water. His brother’s face appeared only once, not far from where he’d been. Grey, determined, as though set upon the task of drowning. Their eyes met before he sank again.

Ilya embraced the water, slipping below; cold gripped his chest, muffled throbs filled his ears. Some limb touched his hand and he grasped it, pulling it to him as a fisherman hauls in a loaded net, then fighting for his footing on the river bottom, back to the shore.

Pavel told everyone how his brother had saved him. It was then that Ilya applied for service in Moscow.

Perhaps Pavel had made some promise to deliver Ilya, thinking this would deter Pyotrovich and give his brother a better chance. Perhaps he’d considered none of this, but it wouldn’t matter. It was enough that they were brothers. Agents would take him to the quiet of a snowy woods. The shot would echo, followed by the quiet tramping of boots. Papers belonging to an Ilya Ivanovich would be left on the body. A final shot to the face would disfigure it. Pyotrovich would have his promotion.

Bulgakov wasn’t arrested but rather hospitalized for several weeks. He was diagnosed with delirium tremens, given fluids and potassium salts, and discharged with the admonishment to avoid liquor and protein-laden foods. When he returned to his apartment, the necessary approvals for his relocation to Moscow were waiting. He never saw Pyotrovich again.

Those with whom he shared a train carriage nicknamed him the “professor.” He’d purchased a ream of writing paper and sat with it for hours each day, pausing for meals and tea and sleep. The paper had seemed something of a habit he wished to acquire. He would finger his pen and watch the landscape pass.

He considered the balance of what had transpired. Why had he only been hospitalized rather than arrested? What price had been paid that made this a reasonable exchange? The physical laws which governed the world seemed untrustworthy.

He wondered about Ilya and Margarita. They were distant, floating in a vague realm of grey light. He tried to place them on the streets of a Cantonese city, or on an eastward boat to another land; but always the sea was becalmed and the sky swathed in mists. He couldn’t see her future; he wondered if she was happy.

The pages before him remained hopeful in their whiteness: surely he would conceive of something worth saying. Even better, he might write something funny.

In Moscow, Bulgakov returned to the apartment on Sadovaya Street. As he climbed the stairs, he startled a medium-sized black cat lurking on the landing. “A new tenant,” he said, scratching it behind its ears, and when he opened his door, the animal trotted in. “So you’ve taken over the place,” he said.

But the room was unchanged, simply dusty. One of the curtain panels was still half hung. He would buy more pins, he thought. Her boots stood by the door, her book on the table. The cat leapt onto the armrest of her chair. Bulgakov picked up the book, examined it briefly, then returned it to the shelf. Its binding was unremarkable among the others. One might wonder why it’d been picked. He went to unpack; no one would know. Eventually it would be forgotten.

Several weeks later, a letter came. He recognized the script. The envelope was slender; it held a page at most. Its postage was Soviet. He sat on the edge of the bed and opened it carefully.

She was safe, living in a town she did not name. Working as a house cleaner.

I’ve learned to disappear. If I passed you on the street, you would not see me.

He finished reading then folded the letter and returned it to the envelope.

Outside, the afternoon was unusually warm for mid-spring. Patriarch’s Ponds was nearly empty. The linden trees were a pale green, their leaves still new. He took a bench in their shade.

Along the path that bordered the water, a figure approached. At such a distance and with the humidity of the air, it seemed to shimmer like a mirage. As it drew close, it gained substance and an older gentleman emerged. He walked with a cane; more from habit, Bulgakov would surmise. His posture was straight and his gait appeared sound. He slowed as he neared, then, with a nod of acknowledgment, he sat on the other end of the bench. He was dressed entirely in black. He held the cane before him, planted between his feet; both hands rested atop its handle. His wrists were pale and thin; his skin was mottled with age. He was clearly much older than what Bulgakov had guessed.

“Take care,” said the man, nodding toward the other side of the pond. “The light can play tricks—it’s played many before.”

Across the water, as though materializing from the heat, another figure took form. Slender, young; a woman; she turned to stare at him. He recognized the clothes: buttercup yellow. The hair, the shape of her face. He couldn’t perceive her expression. Could it be her?

“A perfect afternoon,” said the man. He looked about as though the weather was a performance that had been staged for him specifically. “I should think God would want to spend more time here.”