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“May I see your ID’s?” repeated the woman.
“My charming creature …” began Korovyov, tenderly.
“I am not a charming creature,” interrupted the woman.
“Oh, what a pity,” said Korovyov with disappointment, and he continued, “Well, then, if you do not care to be a charming creature, which would have been quite nice, you don’t have to be. But, here’s my point, in order to ascertain that Dostoevsky is a writer, do you really need to ask him for an ID? Just look at any five pages of any of his novels, and you will surely know, even without any ID, that you’re dealing with a writer. And I don’t suppose that he ever had any ID! What do you think?” Korovyov turned to Behemoth.
“I’ll bet he didn’t,” replied the latter, standing the primus stove on the table next to the register and wiping the sweat from his sooty brow.
“You are not Dostoevsky,” said the citizeness, who was becoming addled by Korovyov.
“Well, but how do you know, how do you know?” replied the latter.
“Dostoevsky is dead,” said the citizeness, but not very confidently.
“I protest!” exclaimed Behemoth hotly. “Dostoevsky is immortal!”
lol
“Nevertheless, you’ll have to reconcile yourself to the fact that I am,” retorted Woland with a twisted smile. “No sooner do you appear on the roof than you blab nonsense, and I’ll tell you what it is—it’s in your intonation. You pronounced your words as if you refuse to acknowledge the existence of either shadows or evil. But would you kindly ponder this question: What would your good do if evil didn’t exist, and what would the earth look like if all the shadows disappeared? After all, shadows are cast by things and people. Here is the shadow of my sword. But shadows also come from trees and from living beings. Do you want to strip the earth of all trees and living things just because of your fantasy of enjoying naked light? You’re stupid.”
The violence in this novel is meant to disturb the reader, so that eventually, he, like the Master and Margarita, will understand that even Mark Ratkiller is indeed a good man, as Yeshua claims. The characters and the reader are meant eventually to see beyond apparent identity to the real identity, to understand that Woland and Yeshua bring the same message. Woland gives everyone, especially Margarita, the same test, and to pass it, one must show compassion even to the worst humanity has to offer, from the hell of the dance at Griboyedov, to the hell of the criminals at the ball, to Pilate suffering torture in the relentless sun. Yeshua teaches by example, Woland by provocation, but they are both teaching that compassion is preferable to revenge. Read in this light, the barbed conversation between Woland and Levi Matvei about the need for shadows assumes new significance, as does the way in which the Master comes to regard his neighbor, the betrayer Aloisy. The very process of reading the novel is meant to educate the reader, to lead him to a state of enlightenment in which the division of humanity into good and evil is no longer useful and the transcendence of the need for retribution is the goal.
When Lou was a girl, her breasts grew both calamitously early and big. Boys came at her, shouting to one another. Alone or together, running, they competed to touch a breast, capture the flag. Had those boys put her off males forever? Throughout boarding school she thought all males younger than her teachers possessed neither fears nor noble hopes, let alone fine feelings—or even any inner lives at all. They were more like bumper cars than people.
lol
She asked herself: Would she rather have his love, or hers for him? Would she rather have Primo himself, guaranteed to love her and only her forever, or would she rather have her love for Primo Dial forever, intact and untainted come who may? Astounded, she realized she would choose her love over his. Was she so selfish? Of course, if she lost him, and she did, the love might well dim—an apostasy to think, but lots of lovers lose. She took the chance, as any lover does, witting or not.
AFTER THEY MARRIED SHE learned to feel their skin as double-sided. They felt a pause. Theirs was too much feeling to push through the crack that led down to the dim world of time and stuff. That world was gone. They held themselves alert only in those few million cells where they touched. She learned from those cells his awareness and his courtesy. Love so sprang at her, she honestly thought no one had ever looked into it. Where was it in literature? Someone would have written something. She must not have recognized it. Time to read everything again.
cute
TWO YEARS LATER THEY were dancing in the kitchen to “Lady Be Good.” Maytree turned down the radio and ran his notion by Lou. It is an unnameable boon love hauls down, that people rightly prize as the best of life, and for which it fusses over weddings. Not only will a cave-dwelling pair cull food and kill so kids thrive, but their feeling for each other, not to mention for the kids, brings something beyond food people need. Each felt it between them when they danced. It was real as anything the mind could know. Her eyes’ crystal, her split-faced smile, agreed. He rolled the volume knob. Oh sweet and lovely.
One July morning, cold stirred Lou. The tide had withdrawn to the Azores. Wind through the windows smelled of mullions’ dust. She knew Maytree had loved her. The perception was correct; only her inference was false. What should Maytree have done? Stayed in harness? She just had not known she was harness. Nor presumably does baitfish consider itself baitfish. Nor did she know how long she had been harness.
What gave adults the cheer to tolerate their hypocrisy? Even his mother praised generosity and hoarded; she preached industry and barely worked. Perhaps every generation passes to the next, to hand down to yet more children, an untouched trunk of virtues. The adults describe the trunk’s contents to the young and never open it.
—I wonder what women need from men that they do not get. In Reevadare’s garden, Jane looked dreamy.
—Courage would be nice, Reevadare said. All my husbands were afraid, every last man jack. She laughed and waved her spotted hands. She looked to Lou like she had gotten over them, every last man jack.