‘Well, of course, it’s Darya who told you that,’ said Margarita Nikolaevna. ‘I noticed long ago that she’s a terrible liar.’
The funny conversation ended with a pleasant surprise for Natasha. Margarita Nikolaevna went to the bedroom and came back holding a pair of stockings and a flacon of eau-de-cologne. Telling Natasha that she, too, wanted to perform a trick, Margarita Nikolaevna gave her both the stockings and the bottle, and said her only request was that she not run around on Tverskaya in nothing but stockings and that she not listen to Darya. Having kissed each other, mistress and housemaid parted.
Leaning against the comfortable soft back of the trolley-bus seat, Margarita Nikolaevna rode down the Arbat, now thinking her own thoughts, now listening to the whispers of two citizens sitting in front of her.
They were exchanging whispers about some nonsense, looking around warily from time to time to make sure no one was listening. The hefty, beefy one with pert, piggish eyes, sitting by the window, was quietly telling his small neighbour that the coffin had to be covered with a black cloth ...
‘It can’t be!’ the small one whispered, amazed. ‘This is something unheard-of! ... And what has Zheldybin done?’
Amidst the steady humming of the trolley-bus, words came from the window:
‘Criminal investigation ... scandal ... well, outright mysticism! ...’
From these fragmentary scraps, Margarita Nikolaevna somehow put together something coherent. The citizens were whispering about some dead person (they did not name him) whose head had been stolen from the coffin that morning ... This was the reason why Zheldybin was now so worried. And the two who were whispering on the trolley-bus also had some connection with the robbed dead man.
‘Will we have time to stop for flowers?’ the small one worried. The cremation is at two, you say?‘
Margarita Nikolaevna finally got tired of listening to this mysterious palaver about a head stolen from a coffin, and she was glad it was time for her to get off.
A few minutes later Margarita Nikolaevna was sitting on one of the benches under the Kremlin wall, settling herself in such a way that she could see the Manège.4
Margarita squinted in the bright sunlight, remembered her last night’s dream, remembered how, exactly a year ago to the day and the hour, she had sat next to him on this same bench. And in just the same way as then, her black handbag lay beside her on the bench. He was not beside her this day, but Margarita Nikolaevna mentally conversed with him all the same: ‘If you’ve been exiled, why don’t you send me word of yourself? People do send word. Have you stopped loving me? No, for some reason I don’t believe that. It means you were exiled and died ... Release me, then, I beg you, give me freedom to live, finally, to breathe the air! ...’ Margarita Nikolaevna answered for him herself: ‘You are free ... am I holding you?’ Then she objected to him: ‘No, what kind of answer is that? No, go from my memory, then I’ll be free...’
People walked past Margarita Nikolaevna. Some man gave the well-dressed woman a sidelong glance, attracted by her beauty and her solitude. He coughed and sat down at the end of the same bench that Margarita Nikolaevna was sitting on. Plucking up his courage, he began:
‘Definitely nice weather today ...’
But Margarita gave him such a dark look that he got up and left.
‘There, for example,’ Margarita said mentally to him who possessed her. ‘Why, in fact, did I chase that man away? I’m bored, and there’s nothing bad about this Lovelace, unless it’s the stupid word “definitely” ... Why am I sitting alone under the wall like an owl? Why am I excluded from life?’
She became thoroughly sad and downcast. But here suddenly the same morning wave of expectation and excitement pushed at her chest. ‘Yes, it will happen!’ The wave pushed her a second time, and now she realized that it was a wave of sound. Through the noise of the city there came ever more distinctly the approaching beat of a drum and the sounds of slightly off-key trumpets.
The first to appear was a mounted policeman riding slowly past the garden fence, with three more following on foot. Then a slowly rolling truck with the musicians. After that, a new, open hearse moving slowly, a coffin on it all covered with wreaths, and at the comers of the platform four standing persons — three men and one woman.
