GALINA SEDOVA’S BULGAKOV. XXI.

Galina Sedova’s Bulgakov.

Kot-Begemot Concludes.

 

“Oh, if so much was I tormented

By dark beginnings of this life,

What then must be the end?..”

M. Yu. Lermontov

 

I would like to conclude my chapter on Lermontov on a jocular note. I’ve managed to solve yet another one of the Bulgakovian riddles, which incidentally has to do with Lermontov. Do you remember when Margarita comes to see Woland for the very first time? In that infamous Apartment #50?---

There was also in the room, sitting on a high stool in front of a chess table, an enormous black giant of a cat holding a chess knight [this piece is called “horse” in the Russian chess language] in his right paw… Shuffling his right hind paw, he dropped the horse and crawled under the bed in pursuit of him… Woland orders him to get back from under the bed. “Can’t find the horse,” responded the cat from under the bed in an intimate, false voice. “He must have galloped someplace, and in his stead, some kind of frog keeps getting in my way.” “There was no frog down there before,” said Woland, in fake anger. “…And unless you reappear up here right away, we are going to consider this an act of surrender, you cursed deserter!” --- “Never, messire!,” yelled the cat, and that same instant he was out from under the bed, holding the horse in his paw.

A ton of information here! But first, the promised puzzle. Had there been a frog under the bed, in the first place? What will the reader say about it?

And secondly, why does Woland call the cat a deserter? This second question is easy: for Lermontov, who is an officer of the Russian army, this is a grave insult.

Hence, Bulgakov chooses him, the cat, to play chess with Woland. As you remember, the chess game is an allegory of the Civil War in Russia, where, the Tsar having abdicated the throne, the Russian officer corps filled in for the Tsar in the ensuing power vacuum, but remained headless, so to speak, in the fight against the Bolsheviks.

The question asked before is also easy. Woland uses the past tense, rather than the present, in his statement. There was no frog there earlier, which is not to say that there isn’t now. In that case, if there is a frog under the bed now, where did it come from?

Interestingly, when right before the ball Margarita is being sent out of town to immerse herself in the river, Kot-Begemot wasn’t even there, at first glance, but his presence was felt, or, more precisely, heard, in the air.---

“On the bank, there flounced a light from the fire and some moving figures could also be seen. It seemed to Margarita that some kind of merry music was coming from there… The music under the pussy-willows hit stronger and merrier… there in two rows were sitting fat-headed frogs and puffing themselves up like they were made of rubber, they were performing a boisterous march on wooden flutes. Luminescent touchwood lamps were hanging from willow twigs in front of each musician, throwing light on their sheet music, the flouncing light from the fire was playing on the frog faces…”

The march was in honor of Margarita, as you reader may remember. Kot-Begemot was responsible for the music at the spring ball of the full moon, having invited a hundred and fifty first-class musicians (Johann Strauss and Vieuxtemps among them). “…And mind you, no one reported sick, no one declined!”

Lermontov was a musician himself. He played the piano, the violin and the flute.

I will be writing about how Kot-Begemot got himself to the river in my chapter on Bulgakov. But for now, some food for thought. Brain food. Did you really think that Margarita would be allowed to fly on a broom all by herself, without any prior experience? Just think how many responsibilities were resting on her shoulders! The spring ball of the full moon happened just once a year, and without it, as Koroviev would explain, the ‘dusts’ would languish away, that is they would lose their ability to work fulltime procuring new souls for the devil here on earth.

As we know, Margarita was the mistress of the ball, its queen. Too much depended on her. So, this all boils down to the simple fact that she was not supposed to be let out on her first flight without an escort. That is why it is quite conceivable that having been the organizer of the frog orchestra for Margarita’s amusement, the young Lermontov (twenty-six years of age at death) could not contain himself from picking one of those frogs and boyishly putting it into his pocket and bringing it to Moscow.

I think that it was not only Kot-Begemot, or Woland, but Bulgakov himself who had a lot of fun writing this episode with the frog.

The novel would have lost much without Kot-Begemot, who, as I have already mentioned, is my favorite character in Master and Margarita. It is quite obvious that he is also Bulgakov’s favorite.

Like Pushkin, Lermontov was not only an exceptional poet, but a great writer of prose as well. His novel Hero of Our Time is an epochal work. One of the chapters of this novel rings a loud bell with most people, only they may have no idea that the author is Lermontov. The title of this chapter is The Fatalist, and in it, for the first time in world literature there is a description of what has become known as “the Russian Roulette.” It was played by the Russian officer Vulich, but by the same token it can be said that Lermontov too played it with his life.---

“I shall never forget that calm, almost merry expression playing on his face in front of the pistol’s barrel, already aimed at him,”--- thus Prince Vasilchikov relates the last minute of Lermontov’s life.

How can one fail remembering---

“…They were not created for this world,

And this world was not created for them.”

Demon, by Mikhail Yurievich Lermontov.

The reader is well aware that aside from The Spy Novel of Master and Margarita, plus the absolute necessity to reveal the true identities of Koroviev-Fagot, as Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin and Kot-Begemot, as Mikhail Yurievich Lermontov, Bulgakov’s masterpiece is a multi-dimensional creation, and it ought to be treated as such. We will return in a few days with The Fantastic Novel of Master and Margarita, studded with a great many eye-opening gems of Russian history.