Demonic Transformations.
Rook.
Poor is he who in fate’s bad
weather,
Having suffered through all
his hopes,
Finds happiness at last,
Having lost the sense of it.
M. Yu. Lermontov.
Bulgakov
introduces yet another bird into his novel, in a most interesting fashion. It
is the rook, and they say that rooks bring happy news. The rooks first appear
in Margarita’s dream, in a “hellish place for a living human being.”
“Margarita dreamt of an unfamiliar place-- hopeless, gloomy, under
a clouded sky of early spring. She dreamt of a patchy, running grayish sky, and
under it a soundless flock of rooks. [Sic! Mind you, rooks have been known for their noisy disposition.] ...All around it was un-alive somehow… And then, imagine, he [Master] appears… Margarita ran
toward him, jumping from tussock to tussock, and just at that moment she woke
up.”
So,
who could this rook be? We get the answer from Bulgakov in a different chapter.
When Woland asks the company who this Latunsky is, whose apartment was trashed
by Margarita, --- Azazello, Koroviev, and Begemot turn their eyes down with a
guilty look. How indeed could they let the inexperienced Margarita be alone on
such a flight as hers, when so much depended on her. Not only were they
accompanying her, turning themselves invisible, as she was, but they also
directed her toward the apartment building of Latunsky, to see what she would
be capable of there. In the episode with the crying little boy, the childless
Margarita passed the test with flying colors.
I
already wrote in the Backenbarter
that Bulgakov introduces Azazello as goat-legged in the riverside scene to show
that Margarita was indeed going to a demonic bacchanalia. Azazello behaves
gallantly with her:
“Someone goat-legged arrived fast, attached himself to her hand,
spread silk on the grass,… suggested she lay down and take some rest,.. offered
her a glass of champagne… [He also] constructed some kind of suspicious
telephone out of two twigs, and demanded from someone to immediately have a car
sent there.” By using the word “someone,” Bulgakov invites the reader to
solve his puzzle, to the effect that this (or these) “someone” was already
familiar to the goat-legged.
Describing
the boyish behavior of the rook-chauffeur, Bulgakov makes it suspiciously
similar to the circus opening act at the Varity Theater right before the séance
of black magic, and there has to be a reason for it.
Bulgakov hints here that the rook-chauffeur is a circus act, and
that this particular personage may be quite familiar to the reader in a
different guise, and he invites the reader to guess who that might be, and next
to think over who it may be when all the guises are thrown off.
Add
to this the company which welcomed Margarita to the riverside: the frog
orchestra.---
“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…”
We
already know that music is Begemot’s passion, it is admittedly his orchestra
(with Johann Strauss as its conductor) that welcomes Margarita to the ball with
the Polonaise. Add to this the frog turning up under the bed of Woland, and so,
who else can it be but Begemot, playing the role of the rook-chauffeur?
Bulgakov describes his
appearance dramatically.---
“An open car hailed upon the island, only in the driver’s seat
there was not an ordinary-looking chauffeur, but a black long-nosed rook in an
oilcloth peaked cap and gauntlet-type gloves.”
Everything
seems clear with regard to the bird: if the car flies through the air, who else
can be its driver but a bird? As for the gauntlet-type gloves, they are a
Bulgakovian sign of the demonic force present, as I noted earlier already in
the chapter on the Backenbarter.
“The black bird-chauffeur, while flying, screwed off the right
front wheel, and then landed the car on some deserted cemetery… The rook
started the [now empty] car, directing it toward the ravine… whereto it went
crushing, and where it perished. The rook respectfully saluted, mounted the
wheel and flew away.”
Now
even the peaked cap falls into place. Its wearer the rook must be a military
officer in human life. Even the Russian word “Kleenchatyi” reveals Bulgakov’s wordplay, one of those he enjoyed
playing so much. If we reduce it by two letters, we get a slightly illiterate
version of the word “Kletchatyi.” Due
to the fact that Koroviev is the only one who speaks such a
colloquial-semiliterate version of the Russian language, we are tempted to assume
that the rook-chauffeur is Koroviev, alias Kletchatyi,
and thus leave the “Backenbarter”
unexplained.
But
on second thought the identity of the rook-chauffeur is no less applicable to
Lermontov. With regard to the wordplay on Kletchatyi, let us not forget that it
was Kot-Begemot playing chess in the novel, and one of the attributes of this
game is a checkered board, falling in the Russian language under the word
Kletchataya (feminine form of Kletchatyi).
The
fact that the rook saluted Margarita in the military fashion, coupled with the
peaked cap, points to the same Kot-Begemot. Lermontov used to be an officer,
serving in the Caucasus.
As
always, Bulgakov doesn’t make things easy for the reader. For a moment it
seemed that we had grabbed the rook by the tail, but lo and behold, the hard
part does not end there. When the rook-chauffeur turns up a second time, there
is no doubt that he cannot be Begemot… But before we move on to that part, let
us learn a little bit more about this bird, as such knowledge will be definitely
helpful to us in the future.
According
to a popular tradition, rooks bring happiness, and at least in the fantastic
novel, Margarita gets it. Rooks are also known for their intelligence and the
power of observation. This bird is characterized by high propensity for
adaptation, it can correctly analyze the situation, remember and distinguish a
dangerous man from a non-dangerous one. It calculates its moves and accumulates
practical experience.
Despite
a series of proofs on my part that the rook-chauffeur is in fact Begemot, the
reader is in for a major surprise. When Master and Margarita are moved from the
Apartment #50 back to their cherished basement, they are seen off to the car by
Azazello, Begemot (yes!), and Gella. The question is who is waiting for them in
the car?
Bulgakov
provides the answer fairly soon: the group seeing them off to the car “that same time melted into the air, deeming it unnecessary
to burden themselves with walking up the stairs.” How does it help us?
By the same measure as Bulgakov has already told us that: “…at the door of the apartment Koroviev bid them farewell
and disappeared.” Koroviev was Margarita’s chaperon, giving her advice
how to behave and what to say. It had been none other than Koroviev who had chosen Margarita as the
ball’s hostess [its “Queen”], and she never let him down, receiving the
approval of Woland himself:
“Yes, Koroviev is right: how
whimsically has the deck been shuffled! Blood!”
There
is no doubt that Bulgakov poses another puzzle for the reader, which has only
one answer. This time, the rook-chauffeur is in fact Koroviev. It wasn’t hard
for Koroviev, having bid farewell to Master and Margarita at the door of the
apartment, to “disappear” into the car waiting for them, just like Azazello,
Begemot and Gella “disappeared” back into their apartment #50 without using the
stairs.
That’s
why when the company came downstairs, the rook-chauffeur was already waiting
for them in the car.
Why
does Bulgakov make both Begemot and Koroviev the same bird? First, to confuse
the reader. Secondly, to show the closeness of these two characters: they are
both great Russian writers. On a more jocular note, Begemot and Koroviev, being
both Russian, were intelligent analysts and were able to analyze their actions
correctly, and having accumulated a considerable practical experience, were
able to adapt in that “hellish for a human being place,” known to all as hell,
to such an extent that they managed to earn their freedom…
…In other words, they were rooks!
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